English · Idiom Candidate

touch a nerve

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To mention something that causes someone to feel strong emotions

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

đề cập đến điều gì đó khiến ai đó cảm thấy mạnh mẽ

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: make physical contact with a nerve

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Hey, have I touched a raw nerve?

This touched a raw nerve and Muccio was instructed immediately to see Rhee and protest at this ' grave breach [of]ordinary diplomatic courtesy '.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “touch a nerve” mean?

To mention something that causes someone to feel strong emotions Literally: make physical contact with a nerve

Is “touch a nerve” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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