Word.ws English Dictionary

rubbing up the wrong way

rubbing up the wrong way is the present participle and gerund of rub up the wrong way.

Meaning of rub up the wrong way

Verb

rub up the wrong way (third-person singular simple present rubs up the wrong way, present participle rubbing up the wrong way, simple past and past participle rubbed up the wrong way)

  1. (figuratively, idiomatic, transitive) To annoy or anger someone.

Questions about rubbing up the wrong way

What is rubbing up the wrong way the present participle and gerund of?
Rubbing up the wrong way is the present participle and gerund of rub up the wrong way.

Words near rubbing up the wrong way in the dictionary

  1. rubbing strips
  2. rubbing the fear of God into
  3. rubbing up
  4. rubbing up against
  5. rubbing up on
  6. rubbing up the wrong way
  7. rubbingly
  8. rubbings
  9. rubbingstone
  10. rubbish
  11. rubbish bag

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubbing up the wrong way (page history and authors); rub up the wrong way (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: “rubbing up the wrong way.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rubbing_up_the_wrong_way. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.