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to lose my touch

to lose my touch

12 7.5
No longer have the skill you once had to do something well
  • idiom
translation icon : perder el toque
  • After years of practice, I worry that I am starting to lose my touch in playing the piano.
  • Maybe I lost my touch
  • Guess I'm losing my touch

Examples

Synonyms

to lose one's touch
vsto lose my touch
3 6.0

To become less good at something you used to do well

is the same meaning but framed as a personal statement by the speaker

Antonyms

1.0

To make something better

Surface Forms

lose my touch infinitive
losing my touch present participle
loses my touch third person singular
lost my touch past participle

Morphology

lose + mine + touch

The meaning 'to no longer have the skill' is directly compositional from 'lose' (to cease to have), 'my' (possessive), and 'touch' used in the sense of a subtle skill or knack; together they mean losing possession of that skill. This follows a predictable possession-losing pattern (lose + [possessive] + noun) and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent senses, especially 'touch' = skill.

Etymology

The idiom lose my touch comes from the image of a worker, musician, or player who needs a light feeling in the hands to do their work; if that fine touch is gone, they stop doing it well. So saying you lose your touch means you no longer have the same 'skill' or 'ability'.