as in gawking
to look long and hard in wonder or surprise
thoughtless drivers pausing on the highway to rubberneck at the accident
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in eavesdropping
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Recent Examples of rubbernecking
Nick Miller, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2025
Noun
Other tasty-looking ties include Red Bull Salzburg against Porto and, for fans of rubbernecking, Russell Martin’s latest chance to win over Rangers fans comes at home to Genk.
—Nick Miller, New York Times, 22 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rubbernecking
Verb
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But the cringe-comedy antics of the original NBC series landed far better in Season 3 than in Season 1, once audiences began to truly love the characters instead of just gawking at them.—
Kelly Lawler,
USA Today,
3 Sep. 2025
-
Nunn has a divided audience, as the Baddies show is fueled with drama, with Jerry Springer style fights to keep viewers gawking.—
Nadja Sayej,
Forbes.com,
11 Aug. 2025
Noun
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In 2004, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card tried to persuade Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was ill with acute pancreatitis, to reauthorize a warrantless eavesdropping program while in his hospital bed.—
Maureen Groppe,
USA Today,
26 Sep. 2025
-
Last September, this second Russian eavesdropping satellite maneuvered close to an Intelsat satellite named Intelsat 10-02, coming as close as 1 kilometer (about 3,300 feet) from it in January, according to a CSIS space threat assessment.—
Benj Edwards,
ArsTechnica,
25 Sep. 2025
Verb
-
In a separate post, Tippett is seen hugging and staring into his beloved’s eyes through a window, followed by a video of the pair talking and snogging, with their intimate conversation muted by the glass partition.—
Gil Kaufman,
Billboard,
7 Oct. 2025
-
Soon my mom was staring catatonically at the baby item in her hand.—
Melissa Willets,
Parents,
7 Oct. 2025
Noun
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Whatever the eventual outcome, most observers are wary of such political interference in traditionally independent bodies.—
Nick Thomas,
The Washington Examiner,
3 Oct. 2025
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Due to their isolated nature, rogue planet observations don’t suffer from interference caused by stellar radiation from host stars.—
Chris Young,
Interesting Engineering,
2 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Most weather and star-gazing apps will have them.—
Janet Loehrke,
USA Today,
5 Oct. 2025
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For long stretches of the play’s first act, Winter and Reeves stay seated, perched at the tunnel’s opening, gazing out over the audience.—
Sara Holdren,
Vulture,
29 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The process involves some questioning by and conversation with church staff to ensure the individual is personally and spiritually ready for the step.—
Keith Matheny,
Freep.com,
1 Oct. 2025
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Creating a good job description relies on insightful questioning.—
Caroline Nihill,
Fortune,
30 Sep. 2025
Noun
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The film stages its riot of activity as hard-nosed honesty, but its portrait is ultimately as ginned-up and inexact as the fictional news broadcast’s lurid prying.—
Richard Lawson,
IndieWire,
5 Sep. 2025
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Other prying eyes won’t have access to the documents, either.—
Zoe Guy,
Vulture,
4 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Rubbernecking.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rubbernecking. Accessed 8 Oct. 2025.
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