Word.ws English Dictionary

rub shoulders

rub shoulders verb: to associate closely; to socialize or mingle.

Verb

rub shoulders (third-person singular simple present rubs shoulders, present participle rubbing shoulders, simple past and past participle rubbed shoulders)

  1. (idiomatic, usually) To associate closely; to socialize or mingle.
    • All classes rub shoulders on the greasy benches.1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, in Memories and Portraits
    • In this establishment, as everybody knows, on occasions when the crush is great, the animals rub shoulders freely with the spectators.1894, Henry James, chapter 6, in The Death of the Lion
    Synonyms:
    rub elbows

Examples of rub shoulders in a sentence

  • [N]ow and then the two dress themselves roughly, like common men, and go out into the city to see what it's like to rub shoulders with the rest of the world.1915, Frances Hodgson Burnett, chapter 24, in The Lost Prince:
  • It pays to network and rub shoulders virtually with potential customers on the Web.2010 March 10, Lori Ioannou, “Use Social Media to Build Your Brand”, in Time:

Synonyms of rub shoulders

Forms of rub shoulders

third-person singular presentrubs shoulders
present participlerubbing shoulders
past participlerubbed shoulders
pastrubbed shoulders

Questions about rub shoulders

What does rub shoulders mean?
Rub shoulders means to associate closely; to socialize or mingle.
How do you use rub shoulders in a sentence?
[N]ow and then the two dress themselves roughly, like common men, and go out into the city to see what it's like to rub shoulders with the rest of the world.
What part of speech is rub shoulders?
Rub shoulders is a verb.
What is the past tense of rub shoulders?
The past tense of rub shoulders is rubbed shoulders.

Words near rub shoulders in the dictionary

  1. rub one's hands together
  2. rub oneself off
  3. rub out
  4. rub salt in someone's wounds
  5. rub salt in the wound
  6. rub shoulders
  7. rub someone the wrong way
  8. rub someone up the wrong way
  9. rub someone's face in
  10. rub someone's nose in
  11. rub the fear of God into

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rub shoulders (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-rub shoulders.ogg.

Cite this entry: “rub shoulders.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rub_shoulders. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.