rubicon

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“
I merely thought I would remind you that you have passed the rubicon--your thirtieth year I It is terrible to think of.

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Definitions (5)

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  1. To lurch. (See lurch, transitive verb) In rubicon piquet, when the loser's score does not reach 100 it is added to the winner's. In rubicon bezique, see the extract. If the loser fail to score a thousand, he is rubiconed. The winner, whether his score reach a thousand or not, adds the score of the loser to his own (excluding fractions of a hundred), and the sum, with thirteen hundred added for the game, is the number of points won. American Hoyle, p. 200.
  2. To cross the Rubicon to take the decisive and irrevocable step: in allusion to the crossing of the Rubicon by Cæsar at the beginning of the civil war with Pompey.

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Examples (50)

  • Only centuries after my nine thousand one hundred and thirteen post-rubicon fellow humans were faxed into the neutrino stream—never to be returned, although the posts promised them they would be —only after that genocide did your precious post-humans rebuild the core population of your ancestors and come up with this idea of one hundred years and a theoretical herd population of a million people Savi stopped and took a breath. —  Dan Simmons - Hockenberry 1 - Ilium
  • After the rubicon, the ARNists had a wild few centuries of such play. —  Dan Simmons - Hockenberry 1 - Ilium
  • They were brought back by the ARNists during the crazy years after the rubicon, before the post-humans put a stop to reintroducing extinct species helter skelter. —  Dan Simmons - Hockenberry 1 - Ilium
  • She was a few years the elder, and she had not only behaved as if those few years were a good many more, but she had very obviously regarded him from the other side of a social rubicon which could never be crossed. —  The Benevent Treasure - Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver 26: 1953
  • A few of the Jews had the rare gene that offered protection from rubicon, but the by-product was that their descendents are all mules. —  WorldsEnough ;Time
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Etymologies (1)

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  1. Rubicon, the ancient name of a small river in Italy.
 

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