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View synonyms for
the rub
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Idioms and Phrases
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]Advertisement
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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.
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