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Glite Dictionary
🤲 Gentle approach 🪙 Easily persuaded
soft touch

soft touch

7.0
A person who easily agrees and can be taken advantage of
  • noun
  • /sɔft tʌtʃ/
  • Offensive
translation icon : persona fácil de convencer (despectivo)
  • He is such a soft touch that he always gives money to charity collectors.

Examples

  • Many people view her as a soft touch because she often helps strangers with their problems.

  • My Johnny has always had a soft touch and always wants to rescue sad people and a general sense that their child is doing you a favor by marrying them.

  • As a teacher, he is known to be a soft touch when it comes to late homework submissions.

Synonyms

sucker
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
300 7.0

A person who is easily tricked

often describes giving in to requests as well as being deceived
chump
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
86 8.3

A person who is easily tricked or treated unfairly

focuses more on lack of sense than on being simply persuaded
patsy
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
49 8.6

A person who is easily tricked and blamed by others

is someone repeatedly targeted for simple requests as well as scams
mark
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
46 8.8

A person who is easily tricked or cheated

broader, covering general yielding and not only planned cheating
mug
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
24 8.2

A person who is easily tricked or cheated

is more about being persuaded to comply rather than just being cheated
pushover
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
18 5.1

A person who is easily persuaded or used by others

is more often taken advantage of through trickery than mere pressure
easy mark
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
9 7.1

A person others can easily trick or cheat

also includes yielding to requests, not only being tricked or scammed
gull
vssoft touch
  • Offensive
1 9.3

A person who is easily tricked or cheated

often gives in to requests and can be persuaded without resistance

Antonyms

sharp cookie
  • Informal
1 5.6

A clever person who understands things quickly

How Gullible

pushover
  • Offensive
18 5.1
soft touch
  • Offensive
7.0
cautious
210 2.9
skeptic
  • US
77 4.1

Surface Forms

soft touch singular
soft touches plural

Morphology

soft + touch

The meaning 'a gentle or considerate approach' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'soft' (gentle) with 'touch' (manner of contact or handling). This straightforward adjectival + noun composition follows normal English semantics and is cross-linguistically intuitive, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would likely infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Soft touch likely comes from the image of someone who is soft and easy to touch — not in a physical way, but easy to influence or take advantage of. So it means 'a person who is easily persuaded or deceived'.