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If you rubberneck, you stretch to stare at something that is none of your business — most often a crash, a fire, or some other trouble — and the word is not kind. Drivers do it when they slow down to look at an accident on the other side of the road; that staring can make a second jam. The picture in the word is a neck that bends like rubber so you can look longer. It is informal American English, though news and the police still use it. People also rubberneck at famous people in the street. You choose this word when the looking feels nosy or a bit cruel: someone else's pain has become a show. It can be a verb (to rubberneck) or a noun (a rubberneck, the person). The verb is the one you meet most.
伸長脖子看熱鬧（尤指開車經過事故時圍觀；貶義）
組成rubber + neck. The neck is pictured as stretchy like rubber. Coined in the United States in the late 1800s, first as a noun for a tourist who stares at everything. A favoured Americanism of H.L. Mencken. The verb comes from the same joining of rubber + neck.
同家族的字
- rubberthe stretchy material — the neck is pictured as bending like it
- neckthe body part that 'stretches' in the picture
- rubberneckerthe person who rubbernecks
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
rubbernecknoun/ˈɹʌbɚˌnɛk/
- 1
Someone who engages in rubbernecking, or turning and staring.
- The uniformed man pointed up at the rubbernecks on the end of the pier.
- We must have looked gorgeous. And what made it worse, there was at least a hundred rubbernecks that didn't have anything better to do than stand around and watch everyone falling all over themselves.
- 2
obsoleteA tourist.
- 3
Someone or something with a flexible neck.
- A suitable washer B1 and rubberneck B2, both of well known description, are provided to form with clapper arm B3 a watertight joint...
- “‘Hi, rubberneck!’ — he clutched at her pear-like breast jutting from her sweater — ‘how long did you think you'll duck me?’”
rubberneckverb/ˈɹʌbɚˌnɛk/
- 1
To watch by craning the neck (as though it were made of rubber), especially if the observer and observed are in motion relative to each other.
- The driver was so busy rubbernecking, trying to get a good view of the accident, that he was almost part of another accident.
- 2
To cause (someone) to watch in fascinated horror, as if rubbernecking to see a roadside accident.
- Hoover’s books go down like a T.M.I. Facebook confessional, rubbernecking you in from the first sentence. Certain patterns quickly emerge.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。