Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Worthless or discarded material or objects; refuse or rubbish.
  • noun A place or receptacle where rubbish is discarded.
  • noun Something considered worthless or of inferior quality, such as a piece of writing.
  • noun Disparaging, often abusive speech about a person or group.
  • noun A person or group of people regarded as worthless or contemptible.
  • noun Something broken off or removed to be discarded, especially plant trimmings.
  • noun The refuse of sugar cane after extraction of the juice.
  • transitive verb To throw away; discard.
  • transitive verb To damage or wreck, as by vandalism.
  • transitive verb To criticize severely or attack verbally.
  • transitive verb To remove twigs or branches from (a tree, for example).
  • transitive verb To cut off the outer leaves of (growing sugar cane).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To hold back by a leash, halter, or leaded collar, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard; clog; encumber; hinder.
  • To wear out; beat down; crush; harass; maltreat; jade.
  • To tramp and shuffle about.
  • noun Something broken, snapped, or lopped off; broken or torn bits, as twigs, splinters, rags, and the like. Compare cane-trash and trash-ice.
  • noun Hence, waste; refuse; rubbish; dross; that which is worthless or useless.
  • noun Money.
  • noun A low, worthless person. See white trash.
  • noun A low grade of tobacco-leaf. See white Burley tobacco.
  • To discard.
  • To remove the outer leaves from (growing cane). See cane-trash, 2.
  • To free from superfluous twigs or branches; lop; crop: as, to trash trees.
  • noun A clog; anything fastened to a dog or other animal to keep it from ranging widely, straying, leaping fences, or the like.
  • noun Hence A clog or encumbrance, in a metaphorical sense.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To free from trash, or worthless matter; hence, to lop; to crop, as to trash the rattoons of sugar cane.
  • transitive verb obsolete To treat as trash, or worthless matter; hence, to spurn, humiliate, or crush.
  • transitive verb rare To hold back by a trash or leash, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard, encumber, or restrain; to clog; to hinder vexatiously.
  • noun That which is worthless or useless; rubbish; refuse.
  • noun Especially, loppings and leaves of trees, bruised sugar cane, or the like.
  • noun rare A worthless person.
  • noun A collar, leash, or halter used to restrain a dog in pursuing game.
  • noun crumbled ice mixed with water.
  • intransitive verb rare To follow with violence and trampling.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Useless things to be discarded
  • noun A container into which things are discarded
  • noun Something of poor quality
  • noun slang, derogatory People of low social status or class. (See, for example, white trash.)
  • noun computing Temporary storage on disk for files that the user has deleted, allowing them to be recovered if necessary.
  • verb US To discard.
  • verb US To make into a mess.
  • verb US To beat soundly in a game.
  • verb US To disrespect someone or something

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun worthless material that is to be disposed of
  • verb dispose of (something useless or old)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Norwegian dialectal trask.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Perhaps from Old Norse tros ("rubbish, fallen leaves and twigs"). Compare Swedish trasa.

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Examples

  • A Frenchman will rather talk trash, _knowing that he is talking trash_, than remain silent and let others remain silent.

    The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 Various

  • Perhaps the ability to see treasure in trash is enhanced.

    Pink Door, Haight Street 2005

  • Perhaps the ability to see treasure in trash is enhanced.

    Archive 2005-12-01 2005

  • I know throwing them in the trash is a “no no” and they can not go into the recycle stash.

    SciFi, Fantasy & Horror Collectibles - Part 1222 2009

  • The recycling companies know that separating out the trash is a waste of time, and that if they want to get more people to recycle, they need to make it easier.

    The Economics of Recycling: A Child Could Understand, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • I never even see those guys, but the trash is always picked up.

    Archive 2007-08-01 David 2007

  • I never even see those guys, but the trash is always picked up.

    The government sector David 2007

  • But discarding them with the rest of the trash is acceptable.

    Think Progress » Bush Bars Media From Stem Cell Veto 2006

  • He was taking off some of these launch restraints, putting in what they call the trash bag here.

    CNN Transcript Sep 13, 2006 2006

  • In an interview after the sentencing, I asked Mort if as a pioneer in what we call trash TV, he felt responsible for tragedy.

    CNN Transcript - Larry King Live: Remembering Morton Downey Jr. - March 13, 2001 2001

  • "I think that it's really easy to just stick [raccoons] as 'trash pandas,' but they do have this complex shadow world that happens parallel to ours, with their own social structures and interests that we influence, but are completely independent," said Scott-Dutcher.

    Finding a Wildlife Refuge in the Heart of New York City Allison C. Meier 2018

  • If, as they used to say, everyone has a book in them, AI has created a world where tech utopianists dream openly about excising the human part of writing a book — any amount of artistry or craft or even just sheer effort — and replacing it with machine-generated streams of text; as though putting in the labor of writing is a sucker’s game; as though caring whether or not what you’re reading is nonsense is only for elitists. The future is now, and it is filled with trash books that no one bothered to really write and that certainly no one wants to read. The saddest part about it, though, is that the garbage books don’t actually make that much money either. It’s even possible to lose money generating your low-quality ebook to sell on Kindle for $0.99. The way people make money these days is by teaching students the process of making a garbage ebook. It’s grift and garbage all the way down — and the people who ultimately lose out are the readers and writers who love books.

    Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made. Constance Grady 2024

  • Neighbors have not exactly been thrilled about the animals, who can be threatening and are often nicknamed trash bandits, for their dark fur color across the eyes making them look like masked thieves, or trash pandas, for their proclivity to dive into trash cans looking for scraps.

    More than 100 raccoons besiege house of woman who had been feeding them Guardian staff 2024

  • Neighbors have not exactly been thrilled about the animals, who can be threatening and are often nicknamed trash bandits, for their dark fur color across the eyes making them look like masked thieves, or trash pandas, for their proclivity to dive into trash cans looking for scraps.

    More than 100 raccoons besiege house of woman who had been feeding them Guardian staff 2024

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