Learn English Vocabulary: TOUCH or FEEL?

Hi. I'm Gill from engVid,

and today we have a lesson about two verbs:

"to touch" and "to feel",

and we're going to look at how they are used. They... Because they mean something

very similar, it's to do with the same sort of action of touching or feeling, it's very

easy to get them confused. So sometimes you use "touch", other times you use "feel". So,

I'm going to show a few examples just to illustrate how they are used.

Okay, so let's first have a look at the verb "to touch", and it's an active verb. It's

something you actively do, physically. If you just touch... Touch something like that,

it can be quite a light, brief, a short time, touching. It's not something that you hold

on to. It's short, usually, touch. Or if you just touch someone on the arm to get their

attention or on the shoulder. Okay.

So, here's the first example, then:

"I touched the kettle to see if it was still hot."

And if you're not sure what a kettle is, you boil water in the kettle to make a cup of tea or

coffee, so you boil the water in an electric kettle or on the gas. So: "I touched"-past

tense-"the kettle to see if it was still hot". So, "touched". So, with something that might

be very hot, you don't want to hold your hand on it for too long because you could burn

your hand, so you just touched it lightly like that. So it's a short, quick touch to

see if it's hot. Okay?

And second example:

"If you touch the cat, she might scratch you!"

So it's a warning.

"To scratch", if the cat doesn't like to be touched... Some cats don't like people to

touch them, especially if they're total strangers. Cats are very particular, I think. So if you

touch the cat, be careful, she might scratch you with the sharp claws. So, again, if you

were going to just stroke the cat like that and:

"No, don't stroke the cat. She doesn't like it."

So: "If you touch the cat, she might scratch you! Be careful."

Okay? So it's a sort of light, short time of contact. Okay.

So moving on to "feel", this is also quite an active verb. For example, it's still making

contact like this. For example, this material, like on a blouse or a shirt:

"This material is so silky"-kind of silk-"just feel it!"

Oo, just feel. Oh, lovely. Soft and smooth.

Isn't that nice? So with "feel" you sort of... It sort of suggests a longer time that you're

in contact with what it is that you're feeling. Okay, so: "Just feel it", like that.

And another example:

"I'm feeling around in the dark."

So we're adding a preposition here.

"To feel around in the dark". For example, if you're sleeping in a friend's house and

you've never been there before, you wake up in the middle of the night, you know that

you're not in your own home, it's completely dark and you want to put the light on for

some reason, to see the time or whatever. So, you get out of bed and you're not quite

sure... You want to put the light on, you're not quite sure where it is, so you're doing

this in the dark, feeling around for the wall, trying to find the switch on the wall or find

a lamp, turn on the lamp. You don't know the room, so you're having to feel around. So

it's about stretching out your hand, making contact with things to find your way to where

you're trying to get. So: "I'm feeling around in the dark."

And then for people who shave... I luckily don't have to shave.

Some women do, apparently.

But I shouldn't joke about that because it's not funny. If you shaved you might:

"Feel your face after shaving", to see if it's rough or smooth. Okay?

To see if you... It's a good razor, a good sharp, razor that you've used. Or an electric razor that goes:

"Mmmm", like that sort of sound. So you feel your face after shaving

to see if it's nice and smooth.

So, again, making contact and for quite a long time. Not just touching. Touching would

be like that. But feeling is more like that. Okay.

Okay, so that's "touch" and "feel". And there's one other use of the verb "to feel", a slightly

different way of using it in a kind of more general way to do with how you feel inside

yourself, emotionally or in your head, how you're thinking. Or physically, it can be

physically as well. So if you walk into a room and you say: "It feels cold in here!"

Okay? Just the physical sensation is: "Oo, it's cold. We need to put some heating on."

So that's the physical feeling that you're sort of receiving a signal that the temperature

is low.

But it's also, as I said, kind of in your mind or emotionally, you can say if you're

at a party and some people are behaving in a strange way, they may be having an argument

or something or they're about to have a fight and it makes you uncomfortable, so you would say:

"This situation doesn't feel right."

Okay? Like: "Let's go home or let's go somewhere else. It doesn't feel right."

And that's more the impression you're getting from the atmosphere,

rather than a physical sensation.

Okay, so I hope those three groups of examples are helpful.

If you'd like to test out your knowledge,

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that would be great. And hope to see you again soon. Okay?

Bye for now.