| 词源 |
rub out. To rub someone out, “to kill him,” isn’t gangster talk from the Prohibition era, as is so often assumed. The term dates back to the early 19th-century American Far West and has its origins in Plains Indian sign language, which expresses to kill with a rubbing motion. The term is first recorded in George Ruxton’s Life in the Far West (1848) and it is he who gives the sign language source. |