rubber band

American  

noun

1. a narrow, circular or oblong band of rubber, used for holding things together, as papers or a box and its lid.

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rubber band British  

noun

1. Also called: elastic band.  a continuous loop of thin rubber, used to hold papers, etc, together

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Usage

What else does rubber band mean? The handy, dandy rubber band, useful for flinging at people and holding together important things, like stacks of cash money, as rubber bands refer to in hip-hop slang. Rubber bands also come up in fashion contexts, from bracelets and hairstyles, and a common complaint for those who have to use special ones for orthodontic braces.

Etymology

Origin of rubber band

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

When an ordinary rubber band is stretched, it becomes thinner while largely maintaining the same overall volume.

From Science Daily • May 13, 2026

But sometimes a disturbance can cause the polar vortex to stretch like a rubber band.

From Slate • Feb. 25, 2026

"Think of it like a rubber band being pulled," Judah Cohen, a climate dynamics scientist at MIT, told AFP.

From Barron's • Jan. 22, 2026

“It’s like the rubber band got really stretched in one direction,” as the U.S. had long beaten emerging-market equities, he said.

From MarketWatch • Dec. 17, 2025

Likewise, multiplying by one-half is like relaxing the rubber band a bit: the tick mark at two is now at one, and the tick mark at three winds up at one and a half.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife