rub-a-dub
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of rub-a-dub
First recorded in 1780–90; imitative
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The second generation was impatient with Stanton, who refused ‘to sing suffrage evermore,’ preferring ‘the rub-a-dub of agitation.’
From Washington Post • Aug. 12, 2022
Down the frog to the rub-a-dub: How bad was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cockney accent in Mary Poppins Returns?
From Slate • Dec. 28, 2018
Not for nothing has Simonon described Merrie Land as a work of “modern English folk music with a bit of rub-a-dub in it”.
From The Guardian • Nov. 9, 2018
Turning the hardest hearts into a fantastic mess, Priest offers timeless covers of John Mayer’s “Gravity” and John McLean’s “If I Gave My Heart to You,” with latter reviving that rub-a-dub quality from the 1980s.
From Washington Times • Jul. 14, 2014
You know in 1850 Webster, in his unfortunate Revere House speech, stigmatized the anti-slavery movement as "a rub-a-dub agitation," and Wendell Phillips closed his masterly philippic thereon with what was accepted as a motto: Agitate!
From The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Harper, Ida Husted
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
