garbage

GAR-bij/ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/UKGAH-bij/ˈɡɑː.bɪd͡ʒ/

12 meanings of garbage

1
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
Things you throw away because they are no longer useful.
Like the pile of stuff you throw out because nobody wants it.
We put the garbage in bags the night before pickup.
The kitchen was full of garbage after the party.
Similartrash, rubbish, refuse, waste, junk
2
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
Bits of food that you throw away after cooking or eating.
Like the leftover scraps you can't eat after a meal.
The garbage in the bin was mostly orange peels and eggshells.
Don't leave food garbage out overnight, or it will start to smell.
Similarwaste, rubbish, refuse, scraps, slops
Note
3
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
A can, bin, or place where you put waste.
Like the bin where everything you don't want ends up.
Throw the wrapper in the garbage by the door.
Please empty the garbage before it overflows.
Similartrash, bin, dustbin, wastebasket
Note
4
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
Words or ideas that make no sense.
Like a story that is all made up and means nothing.
Everything he said about the moon landing was complete garbage.
Don't believe that garbage about lucky numbers.
Similarnonsense, rubbish, drivel, rot, twaddle
Oppositesense
5
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
A thing or person seen as having no worth at all.
Like an old, broken thing that nobody thinks is worth keeping.
He treats his old toys like garbage and breaks them on purpose.
The boss made the new workers feel like garbage.
Similartrash, rubbish, junk, dirt
Note
6
adjectivecolloquialAustraliaCanadaUS
Very bad, or of poor quality.
Like a toy that breaks the first day you use it.
The movie was garbage, so we left halfway through.
My phone takes garbage photos in the dark.
Similarterrible, awful, rubbish, lousy
Oppositeexcellent, great, superb
Note
7
nounslangAustraliaCanadaUSuncountablebefore a noun
A shot that is very easy to make because no one is stopping you.
Like scoring a point when there's no one there to stop you.
He scored on garbage right under the basket while no one guarded him.
Most of her points came on garbage near the rim.
Note
8
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
Computer memory a program no longer needs but has not given back yet.
Like dishes left on the table that nobody has cleared away yet.
The program slows down when too much garbage builds up in memory.
Older systems crashed when garbage filled the available memory.
Note
9
nounAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
Computer data that gets read the wrong way and ends up meaning nothing.
Like reading a French book as if it were English: the letters are there, but it means nothing.
If you open the file the wrong way, you just see garbage on the screen.
The text turned to garbage when the wrong character set was used.
Similargibberish, junk, nonsense
Note

Less common meanings

10
nounarchaicAustraliaCanadaCumbriaEnglandUSuncountable
Spoiled, rotten, or unripe plant matter.
Like the rotten vegetables at the bottom of a forgotten bag.
The cellar was full of garbage where the potatoes had gone soft and black.
She tipped out the garbage of spoiled greens from the bottom of the basket.
Note
11
nounobsoleteAustraliaCanadaUSuncountable
The insides and waste parts of a killed animal.
Like the insides you pull out of a fish before cooking it.
The butcher tossed the garbage to the dogs after dressing the deer.
They boiled the garbage of the pig for the hounds.
Note
12
verbobsoleteAustraliaCanadaUStransitive
To take the insides or guts out of an animal.
I have bought at Boston a dozen Pidgeons ready pulled and garbidged for three pence.
1674, John Josselyn, Two Voyages to New EnglandHere, garbidged means cleaned out, with the insides removed.
Similargut, disembowel, eviscerate
Note

Practice

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Origin

From late Middle English 'garbage', meaning kitchen waste or the parts of a bird thrown away. It came through French from a Germanic word meaning 'to make ready'.