rubber
Pluralrubbers
Pluralrubbers
Formsrubbers, rubbering, rubbered
- 1A stretchy, elastic material (either tapped from certain trees or manufactured synthetically) that returns to its original shape after being stretched or bent.
Manufacturers blend natural and synthetic rubber to get the durability they need.
The seal around the door is made of soft rubber that keeps water out.
- 2Pliable material made from the milky sap of the rubber tree; chemically, a hydrocarbon polymer built from isoprene units.
Tappers score the bark each morning to gather the latex that becomes rubber.
Raw rubber is processed and cured before it can be used in tires.
Note
The material is named after one of its own uses. The word began as rub + -er, "a thing that rubs", and the substance took the name from its knack for rubbing out pencil marks, pushing aside the older word caoutchouc. Natural rubber is the precise term when the tree product needs to be told apart from the synthetic look-alikes.
- 3A small implement used to rub out pencil marks from paper, typically made of rubber or a similar soft material.
He pulled a rubber from his pencil case to correct the wrong answer.
The invigilator handed out spare rubbers to students who had forgotten theirs.
Similareraser
Note
Here the word is still doing the rubbing-out that named the material. It is the ordinary classroom word in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India and Brunei, listed casually among pens, pencils and rulers. Eraser is the safer choice with North American listeners. In the US and Canada, a request to borrow a rubber points first to the slang for a condom.
- 4A condom, especially the external type worn during sex to prevent pregnancy and infection.
She reminded him to keep a rubber in his wallet just in case.
The clinic handed out free rubbers to anyone who asked.
Similarcondom
Note
Slang of the US and Canada, named for what the device is made of rather than for any rubbing. It is frank but casual, more at home in a lyric than a clinic. Denzel Curry raps advice to use one, and the gym coach in Tina Fey's Mean Girls (2004) tells the class to "take some rubbers". Use and carry are the verbs it keeps company with.
- 5Waterproof overshoes, such as galoshes, pulled on over ordinary shoes to keep them dry in rain or snow.
One rubber had split at the heel, so Grandpa finally bought a new pair before the first snowfall.
The children's rubbers were lined up by the door, dripping from the rain.
Note
A North American word, used in the US and Canada and nearly always plural. You pull on your rubbers, and the aunt in Henry Blake Fuller's Bertram Cope's Year (1919) urges a young man to provide himself "with rubbers and an umbrella". A single rubber means one overshoe of the pair. The name comes from the waterproof material, not from rubbing.
- 6Tires considered collectively, especially the high-performance tires used in motor racing.
The team gambled on softer rubber to gain speed in the closing stages.
Worn rubber cost him the lead as his grip faded into the last corner.
Similartires
Note
Racing slang that treats tires as a single stock, like fuel. Because the word is uncountable here, a driver gets new rubber or fresh rubber rather than new rubbers. Speaking of grip, wear and tire choice in terms of the material itself is what gives this use its pit-lane flavor.
- 7The flat rectangular slab set into the pitcher's mound, which a pitcher must keep contact with while delivering the ball.
He stepped off the rubber to shake off the catcher's sign.
The umpire warned him for leaving the rubber too early on his delivery.
Note
Baseball also calls it the pitcher's plate or the pitcher's rubber, but the bare word is enough on the field. The verbs it takes describe foot contact. A pitcher toes the rubber to begin a delivery and steps off the rubber to reset. Nothing is rubbed against it. Like the other non-rubbing senses, its name comes from the material.
- 8A deciding game or match played to break a tie, after each competitor has won an equal number of the previous games.
With the series tied at one apiece, the rubber would decide the champion.
He saved his best performance for the rubber and clinched the title.
Similardecider, tiebreaker
Note
The North American use narrows the word to the decider alone. Each side has won equally, and one more game settles it. The fuller phrase rubber match makes the meaning plain and is the safer form for readers who know the word mainly from cards, where it names the whole series.
- 9A complete series of games (an odd number, so a tie is impossible) especially the best-of-three played in bridge or whist.
The two pairs settled in for a rubber of whist by the fire.
She won the rubber after taking two games to one.
Similarseries
Note
This game word is a separate rubber, unrelated to rubbing or to tree sap, and where it came from is unknown. The card table is its home. Robert Huish's The Red Barn (1828) has a pair that "won the first rubber, winning the two first games running". Winning the first two games settles a best-of-three, so the third is never played.
- 10A single game or match forming one part of a longer series between two competitors, especially in racket sports.
Britain took the opening rubber in the Davis Cup tie before squandering their lead.
The match came down to the final rubber between the two top-ranked singles players.
Note
Racket sports turn the card-table usage inside out. A rubber here is one match, and the whole contest goes by another name, usually tie. A Fed Cup report of 2015 speaks of "the first rubber of the tie". Badminton league rules can specify how many rubbers make up a match. Keep it distinct from the whole series, which is what card players mean.
- 11The card game of bridge in its traditional form, scored over a series of games known as rubbers.
The retirees gathered every afternoon for a few hands of rubber bridge.
He prefers rubber bridge to the tournament-style duplicate game.
Note
A word for a standing game as much as a card game. In Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League (1891), a character complains that it is the first Saturday night in seven-and-twenty years he has not had "my rubber". The possessive turns it into a fixed weekly habit. Holmes's reply about playing for a higher stake depends on that card-table meaning.
- 12A person or thing that rubs something, especially against a surface.
Each rubber in the polishing line buffs the surface to a shine.
The old rubber had worn flat and no longer smoothed the metal.
Note
The plain agent noun, rub plus -er, from which every rubbing sense of the word descends. It combines freely with whatever is being rubbed. A LIFE caption of 1949 wonders what perplexity troubles "the chin-rubber in the foreground". In compounds like this it is hyphenated, and it names a habit or gesture as easily as a tool.
- 13A coarse towel used for rubbing the body, as after bathing.
She kept a coarse rubber by the tub for drying off after a soak.
Sailors used a rough rubber to scrub the salt water from their skin.
Similartowel
- 14An abrasive tool used for rubbing, such as a whetstone, file, or piece of emery cloth.
She drew the knife across the rubber until the edge was keen.
A worn rubber no longer bites into the metal it is meant to grind.
- 15A person who practices massage, working the muscles by rubbing and kneading.
After the match the team's rubber kneaded the tension from his legs.
A skilled rubber can find every tight muscle along the spine.
Note
The trade name is an old one. In John Marston's What You Will (1601), a servant lists his duties: curling a periwig, painting cheeks, perfuming breath. He then calls himself "his froterer or rubber in a hot-house". Pairing it with froterer, another word built on rubbing, shows that the name described the work itself.
- 16A person who rubs down horses, cleaning and drying their coats.
The trainer hired a steady rubber to tend the horses after every workout.
A good rubber leaves no sweat on the animal's flanks before evening.
Similargroom
- 17To watch or stare at something with rude, excessive curiosity.
Passersby gathered to rubber at the commotion outside the courthouse.
The whole bus rubbered at the celebrity boarding at the next stop.
Similargawk, gape, stare, gawp
Note
A clipped form of rubberneck, and slangier than the full word. Salinger uses it in The Catcher in the Rye (1951): Sally is "busy rubbering and being charming", looking around a theater lobby to see who is there. The verb can stand without an object, and it carries a note of disapproval. It shares its form, though not its target, with the eavesdropping verb.
- 18To secretly listen in on another person's telephone call.
Curious subscribers liked to rubber on the party line whenever the phone rang next door.
He rubbered on the call long enough to learn where they were headed.
Similareavesdrop
Note
A telephony word remembered from shared rural lines, where listening in was one way to keep up with local news. A 1999 Los Angeles Times story on Vermont party lines quotes folklorist Jane Beck describing "rubbering", or listening in on a neighbor's conversations. The -ing form is the most familiar one. As a verb it takes on, as in rubbering on a call.
- 19Of a check, not backed by enough money in the account to be paid.
She was fined for passing a rubber check at the dealership.
A string of rubber checks finally landed him in court.
Note
Slang that lives almost entirely in one phrase, rubber check, or more rarely rubber draft. It goes before the noun and is not used predicatively. A check is not said to be "rubber" on its own. It is one of the senses that grew from the name of the material rather than from rubbing.
- 20A hardship or piece of bad luck.
The shipwreck was the cruelest rubber the old sailor had known.
The British barges, off New-London, sometimes meet with the rubbers. In an attack upon an armed smack, some days ago, they were beaten off, with the reported loss of 8 men killed.
1814, The Weekly RegisterSimilarmisfortune, hardship, blow, setback
Note
Dated slang with early nineteenth-century roots. The Weekly Register of 1814 reports that British barges "sometimes meet with the rubbers". John Castillo's poem of 1843 has "I met with a rubber, and got some advice". Meet with is the phrase it travels in. Most readers today would not recognize it, so keep it for period dialogue or deliberate old-fashioned color.
- 21The cushion that presses against the rotating glass of an early electrostatic machine, generating charge by friction.
Sparks leapt from the machine as the rubber dragged against the spinning glass.
A leather-faced rubber pressed firmly to the cylinder, drawing charge with every turn.
Note
A word from the age of friction electricity, when charge was raised by rubbing. It belongs to histories of science and descriptions of old apparatus rather than to present-day physics. The name describes what the cushion does, not what it is made of. This is the rubbing sense of the word, unrelated to the elastic material.
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Origin
Formed from 'rub' plus '-er'. The name for the substance comes from its use as an eraser (rubbing out marks), replacing the earlier word 'caoutchouc'. Meanings unrelated to rubbing or erasing later came from the name of the substance itself.