rubbishing

1. 1
   verbcolloquialCommonwealthIrelandUK

   Present participle and gerund of rubbish. Chiefly British and informal.

   Opposition MPs spent the whole debate rubbishing the government's budget.

   Reviewers in London were rubbishing the play before it had even opened.

   Note

   The verb is colloquial and belongs to Commonwealth and Irish English, where it takes a direct object: rubbishing a budget, a rival, a claim. In Australia it can also mean littering, so day-trippers rubbishing a beach are dropping bottles on it, not criticizing it. Context, and the object, tell the two apart.

2. 2
   adjectivedated

   Worthless and of poor quality, or petty and insignificant.

   Investors lost their savings in a rubbishing venture that never turned a profit.

   The man was a fool to invest his money in such a rubbishing concern. They must have all been mad who did!

   1877, D. M. F. Walker, Loyal and True

   Similarworthless, paltry, trifling, measly

   Oppositevaluable, worthwhile

   Note

   A dated adjective that takes rubbish in its sense of worthless waste and sets it before a noun, usually after a or such: D. M. F. Walker's Loyal and True calls a business no one should have backed "such a rubbishing concern." Today the same spelling usually reads as the verb of harsh criticism, so the old adjective is easily misread.

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