rub elbows with (someone)

(redirected from rub elbows with us)

rub elbows with (someone)

To interact or mingle with a person or group. I don't want to go to the gala tonight, but my wife is eager to rub elbows with the upper class.

rub elbows with

Also, rub shoulders with. Mix or socialize with, as in There's nothing like rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, or At the reception diplomats were rubbing shoulders with heads of state. Both of these terms allude to being in close contact with someone. [Mid-1800s]

rub elbows with someone

AMERICAN

If you rub elbows with someone important or famous, you spend time with them. He rubbed elbows with his movie star clients and appeared on numerous TV talk shows. In the 10 years prior to that job, he rubbed elbows with dozens of political super-celebrities. Note: The usual British expression is rub shoulders with someone.

rub elbows with, to

To associate unexpectedly closely with. This term originated in Britain as rub shoulders with, which is still the more common locution there. Thackeray used it in his Book of Snobs (1848): “She had rubbed shoulders with the great.” Elbows are preferred in America, as in Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906): “Young white girls from the country rubbing elbows with big buck Negroes with daggers in their boots.”