Word.ws English Dictionary

rubber hose

rubber hose noun: a classic animated cartoon style which was first introduced in the early 20th century.

Noun

rubber hose (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic, animation) A classic animated cartoon style which was first introduced in the early 20th century.
    • Bill Nolan[…]happened on something that was soon dubbed "rubber hose" animation.[1985, Joe Adamson, The Walter Lantz Story: With Woody Woodpecker and Friends, page 38
    • Hey pals, I have a whole bunch of articles about classic animation history and styles, but I'm stuck for the moment. I want to do an article about rubber hose animation from 1928-1993 and am having trouble finding artwork or frame grabs to illustrate it.2006 April 26, John K, “Help me do some Rubber Hose crap”, in johnkstuff.blogspot.com
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rubber, hose.

Forms of rubber hose

alternative formrubber-hose

Origin of rubber hose

From rubber + hose.

Questions about rubber hose

What does rubber hose mean?
Rubber hose means a classic animated cartoon style which was first introduced in the early 20th century.
What part of speech is rubber hose?
Rubber hose is a noun.

Words near rubber hose in the dictionary

  1. rubber eel
  2. rubber eels
  3. rubber gauge
  4. rubber gauges
  5. rubber heels
  6. rubber hose
  7. rubber johnnies
  8. rubber johnny
  9. rubber jungle
  10. rubber jungles
  11. rubber match

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubber hose (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: “rubber hose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rubber_hose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.