burn rubber
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to accelerate a vehicle quickly
Literally: to make tires burn from friction
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
They took off at three Gs and cars behind had to stand on their noses to make way as the big Ford burned rubber off towards the next junction south and a break in the central barrier.
‘ I burned rubber in the car all the way to the hospital.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
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Common questions
What does “burn rubber” mean?
to accelerate a vehicle quickly Literally: to make tires burn from friction
Is “burn rubber” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.
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