the rub

Idioms

The difficulty or problem, as in We'd love to come but there's the rub—we can't get reservations. This expression may come from lawn bowling, where rub refers to an unevenness in the ground that impedes the ball. Its most famous use is in one of Hamlet's soliloquies (Hamlet, 3:1): “To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ... Must give us pause.” [Late 1500s]

Example Sentences

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the rub

The beef industry is starting to feel the rub of government workforce reductions.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 18, 2026

What stood out were the allegations - on social media - that hosts Morocco were getting the rub of the green when it came to refereeing decisions.

From BBC ● Mar. 18, 2026

But here’s the rub: ByteDance will still own the algorithm and license it to the joint venture.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026

Public-market investors had visibility into the 2000 bubble, but much less today—and there’s the rub.

From Barron's ● Dec. 12, 2025

But the rub is that there are two ways he can win and only one way you can win.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

the rub

Example Sentences

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