garbage

American  

[gahr-bij] / ˈgɑr bɪdʒ /

noun

1. discarded animal and vegetable matter, as from a kitchen; refuse.

2. any matter that is no longer wanted or needed; trash.

3. a bin or other receptacle for discarded matter, especially kitchen waste; garbage can.

   Hey, who threw my leftover pizza in the garbage?

   Synonyms:

   taradiddle, malarkey, hogwash, claptrap, bunkum, nonsense, waste, trash, rubbish, junk, refuse, litter

4. anything that is contemptibly worthless, inferior, or vile.

   There's nothing but garbage on TV tonight.

5. worthless talk; lies; foolishness.

6. Informal. any unnecessary item added to something else, as for appearance only; garnish.

   I'll have an Old Fashioned, but without the garbage.

7. useless artificial satellites or parts of rockets floating in space, as satellites that are no longer transmitting information or rocket boosters jettisoned in flight.

8. Computers. meaningless or unwanted data.

   That program was not properly debugged and produced nothing but garbage.

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garbage British  

/ ˈɡɑːbɪdʒ /

noun

1. worthless, useless, or unwanted matter

2. Also called: rubbish.  discarded or waste matter; refuse

3. computing invalid data

4. informal nonsense

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Etymology

Origin of garbage

First recorded in 1400–50; Middle English garbage, gabage “discarded parts of butchered fowls; entrails of fowls used for human food”; compare with Middle English garbelage “removal of refuse from spices,” Middle English garbelure “refuse found in spices,” and Old French garbage (also jarbage ) “tax on sheaves of grain,” but the shift of sense here is unclear; further origin uncertain; see also garble, -age

Explanation

If you throw it in the trash, you can call it garbage. Likewise, if something is so terrible you wish you could throw it in the trash, like a really bad movie, you can also call it garbage. Everything in your kitchen trash is garbage — essentially, it's anything that's useless. Garbage can include vegetable scraps, wadded-up paper, or even spoken gibberish. The origin of the word garbage is a little uncertain, though in the 15th century it was used to mean literally "giblets of a fowl," or the extra parts that weren't considered food.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

garbage

Justin Gignac, an artist in New York City, collected garbage outside Madison Square Garden on the day of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding.

From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026

He pointed out the garbage was from outside the barriers that surrounded Madison Square Garden for Swift's wedding, not from inside the venue.

From Barron's ● Jul. 8, 2026

Setting aside the foolish contention that one’s personal actions have no bearing on one’s capacity for political leadership, people who treat women like garbage are not the only ones with good politics.

From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2026

In May, Dayton, Ohio, suspended use of its Flock cameras and covered them with garbage bags after finding that out-of-state agencies had accessed the city’s data thousands of times for immigration searches.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026

Saturday morning, first thing, I pack my backpack with water and granola bars and drag my two garbage bags of cans to the supermarket to recycle them in the machines.

From "Wayward Creatures" by Dayna Lorentz