Part 431

The rubadub of the abolition presses.

D. Webster.

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||Ru*ba"to (?), a. [It.] Robbed; borrowed.

||Temple rubato. [It.] (Mus.) Borrowed time; -- a term applied to a ||style of performance in which some tones are held longer than their ||legitimate time, while others are proportionally curtailed.

Rub"bage (?; 48), n. Rubbish. [Obs.]

Rub"ber (?), n. 1. One who, or that which, rubs. Specifically: (a) An instrument or thing used in rubbing, polishing, or cleaning. (b) A coarse file, or the rough part of a file. (c) A whetstone; a rubstone. (d) An eraser, usually made of caoutchouc. (e) The cushion of an electrical machine. (f) One who performs massage, especially in a Turkish bath. (g) Something that chafes or annoys; hence, something that grates on the feelings; a sarcasm; a rub. Thackeray.

2. In some games, as whist, the odd game, as the third or the fifth, when there is a tie between the players; as, to play the rubber; also, a contest determined by the winning of two out of three games; as, to play a rubber of whist. Beaconsfield. "A rubber of cribbage." Dickens.

3. India rubber; caoutchouc.

4. An overshoe made of India rubber. [Colloq.]

Antimony rubber, an elastic durable variety of vulcanized caoutchouc of a red color. It contains antimony sulphide as an important constituent. -- Hard rubber, a kind of vulcanized caoutchouc which nearly resembles horn in texture, rigidity, etc. -- India rubber, caoutchouc. See Caoutchouc. -- Rubber cloth, cloth covered with caoutchouc for excluding water or moisture. -- Rubber dam (Dentistry), a shield of thin sheet rubber clasped around a tooth to exclude saliva from the tooth.

Rub"bidge (?), n. Rubbish. [Obs.] Bp. Hall.

Rub"bing, a. & n. from Rub, v.

Rub"bish (?), n. [OE. robows, robeux, rubble, originally an Old French plural from an assumed dim. of robe, probably in the sense of trash; cf. It. robaccia trash, roba stuff, goods, wares, robe. Thus, etymologically rubbish is the pl. of rubble. See Robe, and cf. Rubble.] Waste or rejected matter; anything worthless; valueless stuff; trash; especially, fragments of building materials or fallen buildings; ruins; débris.

What rubbish and what offal!

Shak.

he saw the town's one half in rubbish lie.

Dryden.

Rubbish pulley. See Gin block, under Gin.

Rub"bish (?), a. Of or pertaining to rubbish; of the quality of rubbish; trashy. De Quincey.

Rub"ble (?), n. [From an assumed Old French dim. of robe See Rubbish.] 1. Water-worn or rough broken stones; broken bricks, etc., used in coarse masonry, or to fill up between the facing courses of walls.

Inside [the wall] there was rubble or mortar.

Jowett (Thucyd.).

2. Rough stone as it comes from the quarry; also, a quarryman's term for the upper fragmentary and decomposed portion of a mass of stone; brash. Brande & C.

3. (Geol.) A mass or stratum of fragments or rock lying under the alluvium, and derived from the neighboring rock. Lyell.

4. pl. The whole of the bran of wheat before it is sorted into pollard, bran, etc. [Prov. Eng.] Simmonds.

Coursed rubble, rubble masonry in which courses are formed by leveling off the work at certain heights.

Rub"ble*stone` (?), n. See Rubble, 1 and 2.