rubbery
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of rubbery
Explanation
Rubbery things have a tough, flexible texture, like a rubbery playground ball or a rubbery piece of American cheese. You'll often find the adjective rubbery describing food that's unpleasant to chew, like rubbery pasta or overcooked, rubbery chicken. Things actually made out of rubber are rubbery too, like a rubbery water balloon or the pair of rubbery gloves your grandma uses for gardening. Rubbery comes from rubber, a noun that originally meant "an eraser made from a tropical plant," or in other words, "a thing that rubs."
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.
Frozen meals have come a long way from the blanched vegetables and rubbery, puck-shaped meat approximations found in TV dinners of the 1970s and 80s.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 2, 2026
Within hours of carrying the first telegram across the English Channel in 1850, the earliest “submarine telegraph”—27 miles of copper wire wrapped in a rubbery substance called gutta percha—was broken by a fishing trawler.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
Fleming reads unconventional in every way, from his manic and meta delivery to his glam-rock crushed-velvet bodysuit to a rubbery tendency to leap around the stage, no limb left behind.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 27, 2026
People assume it's rubbery, but that's Pacific kelp - Japanese kombu.
From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026
The illustrations were done in black and white—distorted, rubbery figures clutched each other or screamed.
From "Chasing Vermeer" by Blue Balliett
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.
