English · Idiom Candidate

touch wood

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

to express hope for continued good luck

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

hy vọng may mắn tiếp tục

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: physical act of touching wood

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

And touch wood, I've never been caught.

I've just been lucky so far, touch wood.

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 wood” mean?

to express hope for continued good luck Literally: physical act of touching wood

Is “touch wood” formal or informal?

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

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