rub someone's nose in

present singular third person rubs someone's nose in · participle present rubbing someone's nose in · participle past rubbed someone's nose in · past rubbed someone's nose in

1. To confront someone with (facts or evidence) that they find unpleasant in order to make them suffer.

   I want him to rub his nose in the issue. I want a local judgement about a local or specific event, supposed to have happened in a particular region of time and space.

   2005, Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide, →ISBN

   3 more examples

   This weekend you're here to rub his face in one failure, his not securing a Beaumaris to marry one of his stepdaughters, while I rub his nose in the ultimate failure for any Beaumaris, true or not, by informing him he needs to pack his bags and get...the fuck...out.

   2011, Kristen Ashley, Penmort Castle, →ISBN

   Anyone could have told him he'd overdone the dyed hair and should lose a few pounds, but Colin was delighted to be able to rub his nose in the fact that he was meeting someone and merely passing time with Max, if one could believe that was actually his name.

   2011, Pauline Mclynn, Summer in the City, →ISBN

   Consequently, Socrates engages in repeated elenctic episodes with the same interlocutor, not to rub his nose in his ignorance and thereby incur his wrath but, rather, at least in part to lead the interlocutor to the recognition of his ignorance.

   2015, Hugh H. Benson, Clitophon's Challenge: Dialectic in Plato's Meno, Phaedo, and Republic, →ISBN

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rub, nose, in.