touch wood | Idiomator

Meaning: (UK,Ireland,Commonwealth)To makecontactwith wood toavertbad luck, in accordance with afolkpractice.Synonym:(US)knock on wood1930, John D. Stephenson, chapter I, inThe Structure of English from Sentence to Essay,page105:Touching woodpossibly has reference to (a) the cross, or (b) the altar rails in days when criminals could take sanctuary in churches.2003, Chester Schneider,The Making of a Christian Psychiatrist, US: Xulon Press,page193:Very few patients for whom I provided psychiatric treatment ended their lives by suicide, but I became increasingly convinced that my residency instructor whotouched woodbecause none of his patients had killed themselves had not been treating many seriously mentally ill patients for any extended period of time.2010, Rhena Branch, Rob Willson,Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies, 2nd edition, UK: John Wiley & Sons,page102:Examples of rituals includetouching wood, repeating phrases in your mind, wearing lucky clothes or jewellery, and avoiding unlucky numbers, out of a faulty belief that these rituals will stop unfortunate or tragic events befalling yourself or your loved ones.

Examples:

EN: -Let me touch wood!
ES: - Giovannino dice que mañana los colegas de la plaza se ponen en huelga. - Toco madera.
EN: You know, touch wood.
ES: - ¿Te gusta Chopin?
EN: - Oh, no, no, not in his case, touch wood.
ES: - No, en este caso no. Toque madera.
EN: Doesn't it break down? - Nah, touch wood.
ES: -¿Se puede?
EN: Let us touch wood!
ES: Hagamos un conjuro.
EN: 10 days, for disrespecting the Pontiff letting everyone believe that he was dead, and let me touch wood;
ES: 10 días por haber faltado al respeto a la persona del Pontífice haciendo creer que estaba muerto, y que hacíamos los debidos funerales.
EN: He's staying on to win the College Gardens Cup for Beaufort this year - touch wood.
ES: Se está quedando para participar por Beaufort en la copa de Jardines Universitarios.
EN: This may explain... touch wood!
ES: Lo que puede explicar... ¡Toco madera!
EN: You know...touch wood !
ES: ¡Se sabe, estas cosas traen mala suerte!
EN: we touch wood for luck.
ES: Nosotros tocamos madera para dar suerte.
EN: using their firsthand, service user experience to hopefully, touch wood, turn one or two skags from our beloved public housing sector into responsible citizens and tax payers.
ES: utilizando su primera mano, la experiencia del un usuario de servicios, eso espero, toco madera. Y a su vez de la ayuda... de vivienda pública de nuestro amado sector de ciudadanos responsables y contribuyentes.
EN: We haven't had any plagues, locusts - touch wood - like we did two years ago.
ES: Ha llovido mucho y no tuvimos plaga de langosta, toco madera, como hace dos años...
EN: I've got my health, touch wood, I've got my independence.
ES: Tengo salud...toco madera, Tengo independencia.
EN: Yes. He had an awful trauma, and the truth is at first they thought it was hopeless, but now, touch wood, it's 50-50.
ES: Tenía un grave traumatismo y la verdad, al principio no daban esperanzas, pero ahora, toco madera, hay el 50%.
EN: If we have an injury or a fatality, I tend to sort of want to stop because, yeah, i do, feel like a drug dealer sometimes because I'm preparing these engines for these people to go and hurt theirselves with and even though it's, you know, touch wood, not my fault, you know,
ES: Si tenemos una lesión o una muerte, tiendo a querer parar porque, si, me siento como un traficante de drogas a veces porque estoy preparando estos motores para esta gente para que vayan y se lastimen a si mismos

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).