Word.ws English Dictionary

burning rubber

burning rubber is the present participle and gerund of burn rubber.

Meaning of burn rubber

Verb

burn rubber (third-person singular simple present burns rubber, present participle burning rubber, simple past and past participle burned rubber or burnt rubber)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, intransitive) To accelerate so rapidly from standstill that it leaves a mark of burnt rubber on the road from the tire.
    • “We’re rammed to the gills with foreigners doing mad shit. You can’t do this to Irish people. I’m getting out of this country, I’m burning rubber. It’s not safe to walk around here.”2023 November 24, Rory Carroll, “‘Government is not listening’: anger over immigration spills into riot on Dublin’s streets”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive, slang) To move quickly; to go or leave quickly.

Questions about burning rubber

What is burning rubber the present participle and gerund of?
Burning rubber is the present participle and gerund of burn rubber.

Words near burning rubber in the dictionary

  1. burning pavement
  2. burning plasma
  3. burning plasmas
  4. burning question
  5. burning questions
  6. burning rubber
  7. burning someone at the stake
  8. burning someone's ass
  9. burning someone's ears
  10. burning that bridge when one comes to it
  11. burning the candle at both ends

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burning rubber (page history and authors); burn rubber (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “burning rubber.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/burning_rubber. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.