subs. phr. (Scots’).—1. The itch; the pox: any disgusting contagious disease: cf. SCOTCH FIDDLE.
1626. COCKERAM, The English Dictionarie, Pt. I. (2nd ed.). NOLI-ME-TANGERE, The French disease.
1676. E. COLES, English Dictionary (1732). (Touch me not) … the French Disease.
1728. BAILEY, English Dictionary, s.v.
1755. JOHNSON, A Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. NOLI ME TANGERE. A kind of cancerous swelling, exasperated by applications.
2. (old colloquial).—A repellant, person, attitude, or occurrence. Also as adj. = repellant, forbidding. [Lat. ‘touch-me-not.’]
1591. PEELE, Speeches, iii. [Works (1861) 579, 2]. NOLI ME TANGERE; I let go my hold and desire your majesty that you will hold yours.
c. 1630. R. NAUNTON, Fragmenta Regalia (1870), 17. And for my Lord of Hunsdon and Sir Thomas Sackvile, after Lord Treasurer, (who were all Contemporaries), he was wont to say of them, that they were of the Tribe of Dan, and were NOLI ME TANGERE’S; implying, that they were not to be contested with, for they were indeed of the Queens neer kindred.
1634. W. WOOD, New England’s Prospect, 22. The Porcupine is a small thing not unlike a Hedgehog; something bigger, who stands upon his guard and proclaims a NOLI ME TANGERE, to man and beast, that shall approach too neare him, darting his quills into their legges, and hides.
1692. T. WATSON, A Body of Practical Divinity. (1858), 460. Herod could not brook to have his incest meddled with,—that was a NOLI ME TANGERE.
1791. C. SMITH, Desmond, I. 248 (1792). Every attempt at redress is silenced by the NOLI ME TANGERE which our constitution has been made to say.
1806. J. BERESFORD, The Miseries of Human Life, I. 219. Every dish, as it is brought in, carrying a ‘NOLI ME TANGERE’ on the face of it.
1817. BYRON in MOORE’S Life (1875), 605. I used to think that I was a good deal of an Author in … NOLI ME TANGERE.
1821. DE QUINCEY, Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1823), I. 29. A sort of NOLI ME TANGERE manner.
1828. BULWER-LYTTON, Pelham, iii. The NOLI ME TANGERE of literary lions.
1832. Edinburgh Review., LV. 520. Under less restraint from the NOLI ME TANGERE etiquettes of conventional good breeding.
1877. C. READE, A Woman-Hater, x. A trick of putting on NOLI ME TANGERE faces amongst strangers.
