rubber ear n. an attitude or instance of rejection, refusal, or unresponsiveness; the cold shoulder. Also v., to reject, refuse, or ignore. Editorial Note: Sometimes constructed similar to give (someone) the rubber ear or get the rubber ear. Although the first cite is from an American author, the term is far more common among Scots. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...