What is meant by 'the rub'?

Question

I've often heard people exclaim "Ah! That's the rub".

What does it mean?

Answer 1

As the others have correctly pointed out, Hamlet uses the term. According to http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-the3.htm , the origin is as follows:

The origin is the ancient game of bowls (which Americans may know as lawn bowling; nothing to do with tenpin bowling). A rub is some fault in the surface of the green that stops a bowl or diverts it from its intended direction. The term is recorded first a few years before Shakespeare’s time and is still in use. It appears, too, in golf, in the expression rub of the green, which refers to an accident that stops a ball in play — hitting an obstacle or a bystander perhaps — and for which no relief is allowed under the rules.

It later became a broader term for an abstract impediment or hindrance. The Oxford English Dictionary has its first example from Thomas Nashe’s The First Part of Pasquil’s Apology of 1590: “Some small rubs, as I hear, have been cast in my way to hinder my coming forth, but they shall not profit.” Rub of the green is also used figuratively, but in the sense of something that’s just bad luck and can’t be helped; an example is in James Elroy’s Clandestine: “I’m a deputy district attorney, for the city of Los Angeles. We have the same employer. I would rather be a deputy public defender, but that’s the rub of the green, as Dad would say.”

Answer 2

This is from Shakespeare. It means "that's the problem", usually in a humorous way and usually with a problem that you have come across before.

For example, you might propose giving your girlfriend a bunch of flowers, but someone points out that you have forgotten she suffers from hayfever. "Ah! that's the rub," you might say, "I'll have to think of something else!"

Answer 3

It's from Shakespeare's 'To be or not to be' speech in Hamlet. It means that's the problem, the unsolvable, unfathomable, unanswerable problem. That's the fly in ointment. The beaver in the wood pile.

Answer 4

mutual masterbation-that's THE rub

Answer 5

rubbish??

Answer 6

Don't do it to another guy!! That's nasty!!

Answer 7

THE PROBLEM .