Dictionary

rub up on en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (slang) To rub one's body against another person as a form of sexual stimulation or flirting.
   • Others you may flee from immediately because an ugly drunk girl keeps rubbing up on you. 2007, Tim Burke, Michael Burke, Die Happy: 499 Things Every Guy's Gotta Do While He Still Can, →ISBN:
   • There, now they're hugging, the referee breaks them up, but don't you find it disgusting to see a couple of boxers rubbing up on each other? 2014, Davide Enia, On Earth as It Is in Heaven: A Novel, →ISBN, page 211:
   • Had to let it know that I still had baller status. So when I was on the dance floor, busting my moves, I didn't mind the shorty with the tight, tight blue mini-skirt who was rubbing up on me and leading me on. 2004, Billy Jones, Everyday Folks: Short Stories on the Common People, →ISBN, page 7:
2. To stimulate, interact, or resonate with.
   • But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM accouterments, seeking a comfortable middle ground where Bieber’s impressively refined pop-R&B croon can rub up on techno blasts and garish dubstep drops (and occasionally grind on some AutoTune, not necessarily because it needs it, but because a certain amount of robo-voice is expected these days). 2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2020:
   • The poetry, prose and personality in Soul Clothes, may rub up on a curious and compassionate place within you, a place of stark reality drenched in divine hope. 2011, Regina D. Jemison, Soul Clothes, →ISBN, page 36:
   • As Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, “Nice to rub up on the old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.” 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XV, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 201:
   • It is a change for the better, to rub up on the ugliness of the place, see the stains it leaves. 2011, Gareth Creer, Cradle To Grave, →ISBN:
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rub, up, on, rub up.

Forms