rub elbows

present singular third person rubs elbows · participle present rubbing elbows · participle past rubbed elbows · past rubbed elbows

1. USidiomaticintransitiveTo associate closely; to consort, mingle, or socialize.

   [S]adness and poverty are never more intolerable than when hope and wealth rub elbows with them.

   1893, Stanley J[ohn] Weyman, “The King of Navarre”, in A Gentleman of France […], volume I, London; New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 27

   5 more examples

   [I]f any of the officers have but mentioned love to my wife, I'll challenge and fight such of them one by one; and if any of the common soldiers have so much as rubbed elbows with her, I'll beat them like dogs from one end of the regiment to the other.

   1823, James Hogg, “Peril First. Love.—Continued. Circle [IX]. Letter I.”, in The Three Perils of Woman; or, Love, Leasing, and Jealousy. […], volume II, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, […], →OCLC, pages 260–261

   We have in fact nothing to say against the worthy purveyor, further than that he is an intruder when he rubs elbows with the regular audience, and that the utmost personal contact to which he should aspire, is that which makes an ice, a jelly or some other delicacy, the disconnecting instrument between his own hand and that of a customer.

   1833 June 22, “Theatricals”, in Figaro in London, volume II, number 81, London: […] W. Molineux, […] [for] W. Strange, […], →OCLC, page 100, column 1

   One right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on this solid Earth, how strange would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and shadows!

   1851, Thomas Carlyle, “Coleridge”, in The Life of John Sterling, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, part I, page 74

   It was distasteful enough to rub elbows with an illiterate and vulgar white man of no ancestry,— […]

   1901 October, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, “A White Man’s ‘Nigger’”, in The Marrow of Tradition, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 87

   He just wanted to rub elbows with this throng of young people. This was the joy of life he had imagined he had missed while in France.

   1922, Zane Grey, chapter VIII, in The Day of the Beast, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 152

   Synonyms: rub shoulders, hobnob