2. To fret; to chafe; as, to rub upon a sore.
3. To move or pass with difficulty; as, to rub through woods,
as huntsmen; to rub through the world.
{To rub along} or {on}, to go on with difficulty; as, they
manage, with strict economy, to rub along. [Colloq.]
2. That which rubs; that which tends to hinder or obstruct
motion or progress; hindrance; obstruction, an impediment;
especially, a difficulty or obstruction hard to overcome;
a pinch.
Every rub is smoothed on our way. --Shak.
To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub.
--Shak.
Upon this rub, the English ambassadors thought fit
to demur. --Hayward.
One knows not, certainly, what other rubs might have
been ordained for us by a wise Providence. --W.
Besant.
3. Inequality of surface, as of the ground in the game of
bowls; unevenness. --Shak.
4. Something grating to the feelings; sarcasm; joke; as, a
hard rub.
5. Imperfection; failing; fault. [Obs.] --Beau. & Fl.
Flight shall leave no Greek a rub. --Chapman.
7. A stone, commonly flat, used to sharpen cutting tools; a
whetstone; -- called also {rubstone}.
{Rub iron}, an iron guard on a wagon body, against which a
wheel rubs when cramped too much.
It shall be expedient, after that body is cleaned,
to rub the body with a coarse linen cloth. --Sir T.
Elyot.
2. To move over the surface of (a body) with pressure and
friction; to graze; to chafe; as, the boat rubs the
ground.
3. To cause (a body) to move with pressure and friction along
a surface; as, to rub the hand over the body.
Two bones rubbed hard against one another.
--Arbuthnot.
4. To spread a substance thinly over; to smear.
The smoothed plank, . . . New rubbed with balm.
--Milton.
5. To scour; to burnish; to polish; to brighten; to cleanse;
-- often with up or over; as, to rub up silver.
The whole business of our redemption is to rub over
the defaced copy of the creation. --South.
6. To hinder; to cross; to thwart. [R.]
'T is the duke's pleasure, Whose disposition, all
the world well knows, Will not be rubbed nor
stopped. --Shak.
{To rub down}.
(a) To clean by rubbing; to comb or curry; as, to down a
horse.
(b) To reduce or remove by rubbing; as, to rub down the
rough points.
{To rub off}, to clean anything by rubbing; to separate by
friction; as, to rub off rust.
{To rub out}, to remove or separate by friction; to erase; to
obliterate; as, to rub out a mark or letter; to rub out a
stain.
{To rub up}.
(a) To burnish; to polish; to clean.
(b) To excite; to awaken; to rouse to action; as, to rub
up the memory.
{Rub of the green} (Golf), anything happening to a ball in
motion, such as its being deflected or stopped by any
agency outside the match, or by the fore caddie. Rubaiyat
\Ru*bai*yat"\, n. pl.; sing. {Rubai}. [Ar. rub[=a]'iy[=a]h
quatrian, pl. of rub[=a]'iy having four radicals, fr.
rub[=a]' four.]
Quatrians; as, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Sometimes in pl.
construed as sing., a poem in such stanzas.