rubbering
rubbering is the present participle and gerund of rubber.
Noun
rubbering (uncountable)
- rubbernecking
- eavesdropping on a telephone conversation
- In 1907, a North Dakota newspaper described the party-line culture of eavesdropping, or rubbering as it was also called at the time, as follows: Usually when a country subscriber rings anyone up several of his neighbors immediately butt in—not to talk—just listen...2003, Kline, R. Resisting Consumer Technology in Rural America: The Telephone and Electrification. In N. Oudshoorn & T. Pinch (Eds.), How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology...
Meaning of rubber
Verb
rubber (third-person singular simple present rubbers, present participle rubbering, simple past and past participle rubbered)
- To eavesdrop on a telephone call
- "There's a lot of nostalgia about the phone and how it was the way to get the local news," said Jane Beck of the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury. One way was "rubbering," or listening in on a neighbor's conversations ...1999, Los Angeles Times, "Party's Over for Rural Phone Customers in Green Mountain State," (Jan. 31, 1999)
- To rubberneck; to observe with unseemly curiosity.
- Old Sally didn't talk much, except to rave about the Lunts, because she was busy rubbering and being charming.1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 17, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC
Origin of rubbering
From rubber + -ing.
Phrases with rubbering
Questions about rubbering
- What does rubbering mean?
- Rubbering means rubbernecking.
- What is rubbering the present participle and gerund of?
- Rubbering is the present participle and gerund of rubber.
- What part of speech is rubbering?
- Rubbering is a noun.
Words near rubbering in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rubbering (page history and authors); rubber (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:
Cite this entry: “rubbering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rubbering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.