Word.ws English Dictionary

rubbed out

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

Meaning of rub out

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To delete or erase or remove (something) by rubbing, especially with a rubber (eraser).
    • The teacher wanted to rub out the chalk marks on the blackboard.
  2. (obsolete) To get by; to live.
    • The first will understand but little of them, the latter over much; they might perhaps live and rub out in the middle region.1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 54, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
  3. (slang, transitive) To kill, especially to murder.
    • It was just a week to the day since Mr. Martin had decided to rub out Mrs. Ulgine Barrows.1942, James Thurber, The Catbird Seat
  4. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rub, out.

Questions about rubbed out

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

Words near rubbed out in the dictionary

  1. rubbed one out
  2. rubbed one's face with a brass candlestick
  3. rubbed one's hands
  4. rubbed one's hands together
  5. rubbed oneself off
  6. rubbed out
  7. rubbed salt in someone's wounds
  8. rubbed salt in the wound
  9. rubbed shoulders
  10. rubbed someone the wrong way
  11. rubbed someone up the wrong way

Source and license

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