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by Graendal on October 18th, 2004
To touch wood is a superstition action to ward off any evil consequences, say of untimely boasting; it can also be a charm to bring good luck.
The origin is quite unknown, though some writers have pointed to pre-Christian rituals involving the spirits of sacred trees such as the oak, ash, holly or hawthorn.
There is an old Irish belief that you should knock on wood to let the little people know that you are thanking them for a bit of good luck.
Others have sought a meaning in which the wood symbolises the timber of the cross, but this may be a Christianisation of an older ritual.
The children’s game of tag in which you are only safe so long as you are touching wood is not likely to be connected (an indicator of this may be that at times iron was substituted for wood if there was no wood handy).
The phrase itself seems to be modern, as the oldest citation for touch wood in the Oxford English Dictionary dates only from 1908;(Incidentally, that work doesn’t have a single example of knock on wood, which is the American version of the British touch wood.)
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