Word.ws English Dictionary

phubbing

phubbing is the present participle and gerund of phub.

Meaning of phub

Verb

phub (third-person singular simple present phubs, present participle phubbing, simple past and past participle phubbed)

  1. (neologism, transitive) To ignore the conversation around oneself by focusing on one's smartphone.
    • Phubbing has been theorized to provoke conflict in romantic relationships because the partner being phubbed feels unimportant and deprioritized compared to the digital content delivered through their partner's mobile phone.2018, Zizi Papacharissi, editor, A Networked Self and Love, Routledge, →ISBN

See all 2 meanings of phub

Noun

phubbing (plural phubbings)

  1. The act of ignoring a conversation going on around oneself to focus on one's mobile phone.
    • Phubbing, which is the term for snubbing someone you're face to face with by looking at or using your phone, is a big source of conflict.2014, Barbara Pachter, The Power of Positive Confrontation, →ISBN
    • Current studies suggest that contextual factors indeed play a role in the extent to which phubbing is harmful. With respect to situation formality, for example, people report being more tolerant of their partner's phubbing behavior in casual settings, such as at home in front of the TV, than in...2020, Rich Ling et al., editors, The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Communication and Society, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 168

Forms of phubbing

pluralphubbings

Origin of phubbing

See phub.

Questions about phubbing

What does phubbing mean?
Phubbing means the act of ignoring a conversation going on around oneself to focus on one's mobile phone.
What is phubbing the present participle and gerund of?
Phubbing is the present participle and gerund of phub.
What part of speech is phubbing?
Phubbing is a noun.
What is the plural of phubbing?
The plural of phubbing is phubbings.

Words near phubbing in the dictionary

  1. phubbed
  2. phubbee
  3. phubbees
  4. phubber
  5. phubbers
  6. phubbing
  7. phubs
  8. phuchka
  9. phuchkas
  10. phuck
  11. phucked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: phubbing (page history and authors); phub (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: “phubbing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phubbing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.