# garbage

Pronunciation: US say "GAR-bij" /ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/; UK say "GAH-bij" /ˈɡɑː.bɪd͡ʒ/

## Noun

1. Anything thrown away as useless or no longer wanted; waste of every kind. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Things you throw away because they are no longer useful.
   - _Crews collect the garbage from every street on Tuesday mornings._
   - _He hauled three bags of garbage out to the curb before dawn._
2. Waste consisting of discarded food of any kind. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Bits of food that you throw away after cooking or eating.
   - _The garbage from the kitchen was mostly peelings, bones, and coffee grounds._
   - _Spoiled produce and table scraps make up most of a restaurant's garbage._
3. A receptacle or place for putting waste material. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: A can, bin, or place where you put waste.
   - _He tossed the junk mail straight into the garbage._
   - _Someone needs to take the garbage out to the alley before morning._
4. Nonsense; meaningless or foolish talk. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Words or ideas that make no sense.
   - _The report was full of statistical garbage that no expert took seriously._
   - _She waved away the rumor as garbage and changed the subject._
5. Something or someone regarded as worthless. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: A thing or person seen as having no worth at all.
   - _Critics dismissed the cheap sequel as garbage._
   - _He quit because the company treated its staff like garbage._
7. An easy shot, especially one scored close to the basket with little effort or defense. *(slang, Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: A shot that is very easy to make because no one is stopping you.
   - _With the defense scrambled, he finished easy garbage at the rim._
   - _Late in the blowout, the bench padded the lead with garbage._
8. Allocated memory that is no longer in use but has not yet been freed. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Computer memory a program no longer needs but has not given back yet.
   - _The runtime periodically reclaims garbage so the application doesn't exhaust memory._
   - _A long-running process can accumulate garbage until performance degrades._
9. Data that has been misread as a different kind of data, producing meaningless output. *(Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Computer data that gets read the wrong way and ends up meaning nothing.
   - _Reading the binary file as plain text produced screens of garbage._
   - _A mismatched character encoding turns readable text into garbage._

## Adjective

6. Of very poor quality; bad. *(colloquial, Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: Very bad, or of poor quality.
   - _Their customer service is absolutely garbage._
   - _He gave a garbage excuse that no one believed._

## Noun

10. Plant matter, such as vegetables or fruit, that is rotten, foul, or not yet ripe. *(archaic, Australia, Canada, Cumbria, England, US)*
   - Simple: Spoiled, rotten, or unripe plant matter.
   - _By autumn's end the store held more garbage than sound roots, all rot and mold._
   - _The market stalls reeked of garbage where unripe fruit had spoiled in the heat._
11. The bowels and refuse parts of an animal's flesh; offal. *(obsolete, Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: The insides and waste parts of a killed animal.
   - _After the hog was killed, the garbage was set aside for the dogs and the rest salted away._
   - _The cook would not waste the garbage, stewing the liver and lights into a coarse pottage._

## Verb

12. To remove the entrails from a carcass; to eviscerate. *(obsolete, Australia, Canada, US)*
   - Simple: To take the insides or guts out of an animal.

## Origin

From late Middle English 'garbage', first meaning refuse or the offal and giblets of a fowl, literally what is purged away. It came from Anglo-Norman and Old French 'garber' ('to refine or make neat'), which was of Germanic origin, from Frankish '*garwijan' ('to make ready'), akin to Old English 'ġearwian' ('to make ready, adorn').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/garbage (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).