rubberneck

1. 1.

   strain to watch; stare curiously

   “The cars slowed down and the drivers rubbernecked after the accident”

   Broaderwatch

Other forms of rubberneck

plural

rubbernecks·

past tense

rubbernecked·

present participle

rubbernecking·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about rubberneck

What does rubberneck mean?

rubberneck means "a tourist who is visiting sights of interest". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in rubberneck?

rubberneck has 3 syllables: rub-ber-neck. The stress falls on "rub".

What is another word for rubberneck?

Close synonyms include sightseer, excursionist, tripper, rubbernecker. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is rubberneck a common word?

rubberneck is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.