rugburn
rugburn noun: a painful burn or redness of skin, especially on knees, elbows, and hands, from repetitive friction against a rug or similar surface.
Noun
rugburn (countable and uncountable, plural rugburns)
- A painful burn or redness of skin, especially on knees, elbows, and hands, from repetitive friction against a rug or similar surface.
- The ombudsman found that youth living at El Pueblo remained under the care and supervision of staff who had been accused of abusing them. In one case, a youth was reportedly dragged across the carpet by two staff members, resulting in rugburns on his face.2019 August 13, “A Pueblo center for troubled kids had 243 abuse allegations in the year before it closed”, in The Colorado Sun
- The rugburn became increasingly inflamed, and, through trembling lips, which were pursed as if to whistle, my cure began singing its sublime, plaintive painsong.2021, Adam Levin, Bubblegum, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 9
- Rugburns in general.
- Like, seriously, thanks for the music. It's meant a lot. […] Your lead's hotter than rugburn.2004, Robert Voedisch, Zamboni Blues
- His writing about the shattering nature of syphilis is both devastating and a bit sly. "You could joke with the word 'pox,'" he wrote. "You can’t joke with the word 'syphilis.'" Reading Lawrence’s writing about sex, in general, leaves you suspecting that he walked around with perpetual rugburn.2019 November 8, Dwight Garner, “From Nabokov and Lawrence, Giants of 20th-Century Fiction, New Volumes of Nonfiction”, in New York Times
Verb
rugburn (third-person singular simple present rugburns, present participle rugburning, simple past and past participle rugburned)
- To cause a rugburn to form.
- Every time I rugburned my knees, every time some morbidly obese man fondled me as if I were his mindless property, my distaste for the job deepened.2010, John Lindo, Collegiate Maneuvers, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 174
- The threadbare red and gold carpeting rugburned his cheek, but he rolled over at once and kicked the door shut.2014, Keith Melton, Dark Ride Dogs, Etopia Press, →ISBN
Forms of rugburn
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rugburns |
| alternative form | rug burn |
| alternative form | rug-burn |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rugburns |
| present participle | rugburning |
| past participle | rugburned |
| past | rugburned |
Origin of rugburn
From rug + burn.
Words formed from rugburn
Questions about rugburn
- What does rugburn mean?
- Rugburn means a painful burn or redness of skin, especially on knees, elbows, and hands, from repetitive friction against a rug or similar surface.
- What part of speech is rugburn?
- Rugburn can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of rugburn?
- The plural of rugburn is rugburns.
Words near rugburn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rugburn (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-rugburn.wav.
Cite this entry: “rugburn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rugburn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.