MEANING
To annoy or irritate someone, often without intending to do so.
Use it for
annoying someone unintentionally; finding a person’s manner irritating; creating friction through behavior; disliking how someone speaks or actsNames friction caused by manner or behavior, without requiring a deliberate insult. Writing functions: Unintended irritation. Semantic categories (by meaning): Social friction; Irritation. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
On the page
His habit of correcting every small detail rubbed the team the wrong way.
I could not explain why the host rubbed me the wrong way.
Word forms
- Base
- rub someone the wrong way
Usage notes
Inflect rub: rubs someone the wrong way; rubbed someone the wrong way; rubbing someone the wrong way. British variant adds up after the object. Register: informal. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
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