Word.ws English Dictionary

rubs salt in the wound

rubs salt in the wound is the third-person singular simple present indicative of rub salt in the wound.

Meaning of rub salt in the wound

Verb

rub salt in the wound (third-person singular simple present rubs salt in the wound, present participle rubbing salt in the wound, simple past and past participle rubbed salt in the wound)

  1. (idiomatic) To aggravate or exacerbate a physical or emotional injury.
    • To rub further salt into the wound, the narrow-gauge locomotives and rolling stock received the new corporate blue livery and double arrows logo.2023 January 11, Richard Foster, “British Rail's weirdest railways...: Vale of Rheidol”, in RAIL, number 974, page 47

Questions about rubs salt in the wound

What is rubs salt in the wound the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Rubs salt in the wound is the third-person singular simple present indicative of rub salt in the wound.

Words near rubs salt in the wound in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubs salt in the wound (page history and authors); rub salt in the wound (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: “rubs salt in the wound.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rubs_salt_in_the_wound. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.