the.com/untouchable
Not above the law — just expensive enough that the law gets tired first.
means Someone or something so protected by power, wealth, or status that normal rules or consequences don't seem to apply to them.
from Built from 'touch' plus the negating 'un-' and the suffix '-able,' literally meaning 'not able to be touched' — first used in the 1800s for things physically or legally untouchable, then famously applied to describe lowest-caste groups in South Asia who were deemed untouchable under caste systems (a term Gandhi and others later fought to retire, promoting 'Dalit' instead). The modern ironic sense — the untouchable celebrity, mobster, or executive who floats above consequence — flips the word's origin on its head: once it marked those cast furthest down, now it marks those lifted furthest up.
- origin
- first meant lowest Indian caste, denied contact entirely
- irony flip
- now means too powerful to touch, not too low
- eliot ness
- borrowed the word for incorruptible, not corrupt, agents
- reality check
- usually just means great lawyers and better accountants