THE RUB Definition & Meaning

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the rub

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Idioms and Phrases

The difficulty or problem, as in We'd love to come but there's the rub—we can't get reservations . This expression may come from lawn bowling, where rub refers to an unevenness in the ground that impedes the ball. Its most famous use is in one of Hamlet's soliloquies ( Hamlet , 3:1): “To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ... Must give us pause.” [Late 1500s]

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Example Sentences

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South Africa captain Temba Bavuma: "A clinical performance from our side. We got the rub of the green with the toss and took the brave decision to bat first not knowing how the wicket would play. It was a more than competitive score, close to our best performance."

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“To be thus is nothing/But to be safely thus,” Macbeth observes, noting the rub of his illegitimate power grab.

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That said, “Change the World” cooks, not least because of the rub between Babyface’s luscious groove and Clapton’s well-creased vocal.

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But here is the rub: so many of these ideas will be keenly contested.

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The rub is a virtual private network, which sets up an encrypted tunnel for internet browsing and can run it through practically any country.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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