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; garble, -age

Example Sentences

Once freed from the garbage, she was loaded onto a stretcher and brought to the aquarium.

From Los Angeles Times

Then she gives us a checklist of what to do: strip and make the beds, vacuum, clean the bathroom, throw away the garbage.

From Literature

At the far end of the south wing was the maker space, filled with “supplies” a.k.a. “garbage” of all kinds.

From Literature

Around 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year, "the equivalent of two large garbage trucks filled with plastic being dumped into the ocean every minute."

From Barron's

“You eat out all the time and buy stuff you don’t need. You don’t worry if you drop a piece of garbage on the ground.”

From Literature