The rubber meets the sky?

Ok, a student stumped me with this one today. What does ‘the rubber meets the sky’ mean?

Put your balls in the air like you just don’t care?

Tell 'em to look it up: lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html

google.com’ is also a underutilised language resource.

Can’t find it? There’s your answer.

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Of course I googled first, silly rabbit. :stuck_out_tongue: I found a bunch of people using the phrase, but nothing explaining the phrase.

Thanks for the concordance thingy, but that didn’t turn up anything.

Is it something like reality versus hype?

No, no, I meant for your student.

Got the Chinese of what the student said?

The student said, in English, “What does ‘the rubber meets the sky’ mean?” I thought it had something to do with flinging condoms into the heavens. :idunno:

Oh, so this is purely an English thing? Wow.

Have you googled “where the river meets the sky?” :wink:

Also “where the ocean/sea meets the sky.” In other words, the edge of the horizon/as far as the eye can see, etc.

Doesn’t mean a damn thing. The correct quote is “Where the Rubber Meets the Road”. An advertising slogan for a USA tire manufacturer.

It also can be a slogan relating to truth from bs.

Did you find this phrase? I think someone’s being clever.
“Where the rubber meets the sky: the semantic gap between data producers and data consumers.”

http://virtualbumperstickers.blogspot.com/2006/05/marketing-its-wherethe-rubber-meets.html
http://www.focuslearninggroup.com/resources/articles/getreal.php
http://www.4hb.com/03tdgetreal2.html

After looking around a bit, here’s my take. It refers to something that sounds good in theory but doesn’t work in practice. It’s a mocking of jingoistic corpospeak. Reminds me of how we programmer drones would mock the marketing drones.

Ok, so far we have ‘reality vs. hype’, ‘something that sounds good in theory but doesn’t work in practice’, ‘semantic gap’, ‘the edge of the horizon’, ‘'flinging condoms into the heavens’, and ‘put your balls in the air like you just don’t care’. Therefore, the correct answer must be Tainan Cowboy’s: “Doesn’t mean a damn thing” :laughing:

:laughing:

Looks like a geeky spin on that tyre ad, that has, erh, gained some degree of traction.

HG

HGC: that’s a shocking pun, go and wash your head out. i suggest lots of barley juice.

“rubber meets the sky” is obviously a reference to a car accident wherre the car rolled.

or perhaps the strip of sealant around the windscreen, or the weatherstrip around any window. etc

or a mondegreen for a million other things: “wear these underpants, this guy”

Taos Regional Airport?

Did you ask the student where he encountered it? What the context is? A fact that all language learners should be aware of: context is king.

My take is that it’s some kind of play on words relating to “the rubber meets the road”.

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It refers to a bridge between theory and practice

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That was a surprise grave digging!
Welcome to the forum, @King!

The key to idioms is people have to know what they mean. I would therefore advise against using “The rubber meets the sky”.

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