Words, words, words

Today's misused word, or perhaps the word I choose to bolt down and tickle to death today is tactile. Tactile generally means 'perceptible to the sense of touch' or, perhaps, something close to 'tangible'. At a stretch you could make it more abstract, giving tactility to language for example, but I wouldn't recommend it myself

I mention it because a motor noter at Fairfax wrote: The dash is slightly soft to the touch, giving a more tactile feel than the harder plastics typical of competitors.

Now I'm all for the evolution of language and the constant mutation of meaning, but what's going on here? The writer is saying that a soft dash is somehow by degree more tactile, ie 'more' perceptible to the touch, than a harder one? If this is possible, which I doubt, wouldn't a softer plastic actually be ever so slightly less tactile? In fact this is all codswallop, either you can feel it or you can't, surely? Either it's tactile or it's not.

I gather the author of this nonsense, Toby Hagon, just wanted to say the softer plastic was, indeed, softer than a harder one, and nicer to boot. Groan. Just keep him away from the thesaurus, pleeeease!