Phub
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An instance of phubbing.
"Researchers have found that phubs damage relationships and increase dissatisfaction and depression. About 25% of couples have fought over phubs (Goldberg, 2018)."
- 1 To ignore the conversation around oneself by focusing on one's smartphone. neologism, transitive
"Phubbing has been theorized to provoke conflict in romantic relationships because the partner being phubbed feels unimportant and deprioritized compared to the digital content delivered through their partner's mobile phone."
Example
More examples"Phubbing has been theorized to provoke conflict in romantic relationships because the partner being phubbed feels unimportant and deprioritized compared to the digital content delivered through their partner's mobile phone."
Etymology
Blend of phone + snub, coined by Adrian Mills at the McCann advertising agency in a brainstorming session in collaboration with the Macquarie Dictionary and a group of selected wordsmiths; subsequently widely promoted by the McCann agency.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.