to lose my touch
12
7.5
- idiom
- 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
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I guess I haven't lost my touch.
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Remy, you're losing your touch.
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I mean, I thought I was losing my touch.
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You have not lost your touch, my friend.
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I thought I was losing my touch.
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In that case, I must be losing my touch.
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Well, I must be losing my touch.
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Am I losing my touch here?
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I am losing my touch.
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I'm beginning to feel like I'm losing my touch
Fiction book (1999)
Synonyms
3
6.0
To become less good at something you used to do well
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
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'.