Word.ws English Dictionary

rubbed elbows

rubbed elbows is the simple past and past participle of rub elbows.

Meaning of rub elbows

Verb

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

  1. (US, idiomatic, intransitive) To associate closely; to consort, mingle, or socialize.
    • [I]f any of the officers have but mentioned love to my wife, I'll challenge and fight such of them one by one; and if any of the common soldiers have so much as rubbed elbows with her, I'll beat them like dogs from one end of the regiment to the other.1823, James Hogg, “Peril First. Love.—Continued. Circle [IX]. Letter I.”, in The Three Perils of Woman; or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy. […], volume II, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and...

Questions about rubbed elbows

What is rubbed elbows the simple past and past participle of?
Rubbed elbows is the simple past and past participle of rub elbows.

Words near rubbed elbows in the dictionary

  1. rubbages
  2. rubbed
  3. rubbed along
  4. rubbed away
  5. rubbed down
  6. rubbed elbows
  7. rubbed in
  8. rubbed it in
  9. rubbed off
  10. rubbed off on
  11. rubbed one off

Source and license

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