> as lemmas

1830 C. M. Sedgwick Clarence x. 138 You touched a nerve, my dear Mrs. Layton, when you satarised old bachelors.

1861 G. Meredith Evan Harrington II. v. 91 ‘Touching a nerve’ is one of those unforgiveable small offences which, in our civilised state, produce the social vendettas and dramas that, with savage nations, spring from the spilling of blood.

1899 Edwardsville (Illinois) Intelligencer 21 July 8/4 Your mother looks at you sometimes in church when the sermon touches a particularly raw nerve in your spiritual makeup.

1920 Times 22 Sept. 9/1 Nor is that the only raw nerve that has been touched.

1951 L. P. Hartley My Fellow Devils xiv. 132 The chagrin and disappointment he had suffered touched some nerve in him that intelligence and ambition and industry had never reached.

1962 Listener 22 Mar. 512/2 Lukács's description of existentialism as a ‘permanent carnival of fetishized inwardness’ touched a raw nerve.

1974 E. Ambler Dr. Frigo ii. 114 I had touched a nerve. ‘Delvert! That man is..corrupt.’

1994 This Mag. (Toronto) Nov. 13/1 Elena hit a nerve and found herself the centre of a heated debate.

2000 Independent 10 Aug. ii. 4/3 The Slow Cities project touches a nerve because one of the growing divisions in our society is not about money but about time: between the time-rich and the time-poor.