rub up on

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

rub up on (third-person singular simple present rubs up on, present participle rubbing up on, simple past and past participle rubbed up on)

1. (slang) To rub one's body against another person as a form of sexual stimulation or flirting.
   • 2004, Billy Jones, Everyday Folks: Short Stories on the Common People, →ISBN, page 7:

     Had to let it know that I still had baller status. So when I was on the dance floor, busting my moves, I didn't mind the shorty with the tight, tight blue mini-skirt who was rubbing up on me and leading me on.

   • 2007, Tim Burke, Michael Burke, Die Happy: 499 Things Every Guy's Gotta Do While He Still Can, →ISBN:

     Others you may flee from immediately because an ugly drunk girl keeps rubbing up on you.

   • 2014, Davide Enia, On Earth as It Is in Heaven: A Novel, →ISBN, page 211:

     There, now they're hugging, the referee breaks them up, but don't you find it disgusting to see a couple of boxers rubbing up on each other?

2. To stimulate, interact, or resonate with.
   • 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 15, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, page 201:

     As Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, “Nice to rub up on the old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.”

   • 2011, Regina D. Jemison, Soul Clothes, →ISBN, page 36:

     The poetry, prose and personality in Soul Clothes, may rub up on a curious and compassionate place within you, a place of stark reality drenched in divine hope.

   • 2011, Gareth Creer, Cradle To Grave, →ISBN:

     It is a change for the better, to rub up on the ugliness of the place, see the stains it leaves.

   • 2012 June 26, Genevieve Koski, “Music: Reviews: Justin Bieber: Believe”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 6 August 2020:

     But musical ancestry aside, the influence to which [Justin] Bieber is most beholden is the current trends in pop music, which means Believe is loaded up with EDM accouterments, seeking a comfortable middle ground where Bieber’s impressively refined pop-R&B croon can rub up on techno blasts and garish dubstep drops (and occasionally grind on some AutoTune, not necessarily because it needs it, but because a certain amount of robo-voice is expected these days).

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rub,‎ up,‎ on,‎ rub up.