touching off

verb

Definition of touching offnext
present participle of touch off
as in triggering
to cause to function his obscene comment touched off a heated debate about the need for censorship on live broadcasts

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Examples Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for touching off
  1. activating
  2. sparking
  3. driving
Verb
  • As the majority of the staff evacuated, Smith and a handful of employees remained and raced around the property activating snow guns.
    Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2024
  • Criticism triggers the sympathetic nervous system, activating the fight-flight-freeze response—our brain’s natural survival mechanism.
    Jason Walker, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2024
Definition of activating
Verb
  • Then, Hong Kong stocks dropped on Thursday, ending a 6-day winning streak and sparking fears that China’s stimulus rally could have started to fizzle out.
    Anniek Bao,Sonia Heng, CNBC, 4 Oct. 2024
  • Yeh chose to focus her efforts around sausage because of food’s unique power to bring people fun and pleasure, while also sparking deeper conversations.
    Reia Li, The Arizona Republic, 2 Oct. 2024
Definition of sparking
Verb
  • The driving rats project has opened new and unexpected doors in my behavioral neuroscience research lab.
    Kelly Lambert, Discover Magazine, 14 Nov. 2024
  • Modern cars have almost unilaterally replaced dashboards full of tactile knobs with sleek, iPad-like digital displays, despite concerns these alluring devices might be making distracted driving worse.
    Mack DeGeurin, Popular Science, 13 Nov. 2024
Definition of driving
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Thesaurus Entries Near touching off

touching down

touching off

touching (on)

See More Nearby Entries 

Cite this Entry

“Touching off.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/touching%20off. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.

Copy Citation

Share

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See All

How to Use Em Dashes (—), En Dashes (–) , and Hyphens (-)

Plural and Possessive Names: A Guide

The Difference Between 'i.e.' and 'e.g.'

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?

What's the difference between 'fascism' and 'socialism'?
See All

Popular in Wordplay

See All

8 Words with Fascinating Histories

8 Words for Lesser-Known Musical Instruments

Birds Say the Darndest Things

10 Words from Taylor Swift Songs (Merriam's Version)

10 Scrabble Words Without Any Vowels
See All

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Word Game Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
little chihuahua dressing like a turkey for thanksgiving
Giving Thanks Quiz Decide which words express gratitude and which gi...