I was reading a comic book in which one character says he has "a rub of a page" from a book. What does that phrase mean? I tried googling, but 'rub of a page' only turns up two results, neither of which is useful, and checking the dictionary doesn't help either.
From the context I figured it was supposed to be something like a copy as well, but the word "rub" just throws me off because the original work the character made the copy of is a plain ink-on-paper book with flat pages.
That was my first idea as well, but I figured that couldn't be it because the original work the character copied is an ink-on-paper book with flat pages. Could it be that the writer simply picked the wrong word when he meant 'copy'?
From the context I'd go with a copy as well. Presumably the original was created in a way that the contents could be transferred by putting a sheet of paper over it then using a pencil or crayon to recreate the image.
From the context I figured it was supposed to be something like a copy as well, but the word "rub" just throws me off because the original work he made the copy of is a plain ink-on-paper book with flat pages.
You can get a rubbing of a page if the letters are deeply sunk into the page, as with some printing methods and some handwritten works (it's the same as using a pencil rubbing to show what was written on the previous page of a notepad). But I'd use the term "rubbing of a page" not "rub of a page" for that.
That makes sense. But if the letters were not indented, but were heavily inked, as happens with some computer printers, you might get a copy by putting a new sheet over it and rubbing so some ofthe ink would come off. This sometimes happened with xerographic printing: when two copies of the book were packed closely together for shipping, one book cover would pick up a sort of shadow image of the other.
Was this comic translated? If it wasn't originally in English, there is always the chance it might have been mistranslated and the intention really was copy not rub.
sonnekinde) wrote in 
linguaphiles, 
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