bilge

noun \ ˈbilj \

Updated on: 10 May 2018

Definition of bilge

1 : the bulging part of a cask or barrel

2 a : the part of the underwater body of a ship between the flat of the bottom and the vertical topsides

b : the lowest point of a ship's inner hull

3 : stale or worthless remarks or ideas

See bilge defined for English-language learners

See bilge defined for kids

Examples of bilge in a Sentence

That magazine prints a lot of bilge about celebrities.
tried to justify his bigoted tirade with a lot of stale and insincere bilge

Recent Examples of bilge from the Web

The time Microsoft’s chatbot Tay was trained by Twitter users to parrot racist bilge.

— tad friend, The New Yorker, "How Frightened Should We Be of A.I.?," 7 May 2018
The men had to sleep on the deck because the bilge backed up and the smell was so bad.

— roxanne washington, cleveland.com, "'Sailing for Science:' Historic 1920s voyage stocked Cleveland Museum of Natural Histrory's shelves," 25 Mar. 2018
They were transported to new areas as adults that had attached to the hulls or outside of engines of recreational boats or as microscopic larvae - veligers - hiding in bilge, live wells or other water-holding areas of boats.

— shannon tompkins, Houston Chronicle, "Boaters key to slowing invasive species," 3 Mar. 2018
The cavernous bilge, the towering foredeck, the phalanxes of Tomahawk missiles — the 900-foot dreadnought is itself a mesmeric site, and director Andrew Davis conveys the hard-iron majesty, as well as mystery, of the battleship to the hilt.

— thr staff, The Hollywood Reporter, "'Under Siege': THR's 1992 Review," 9 Oct. 2017
The whalemen spend several days cleaning the ship and themselves, from the bilges to the top of the mainmast.

— Longreads, "A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick," 21 Sep. 2017
The Coast Guard said 5,000 gallons of oily water from the engine room bilge and 1,200 gallons of oily mixture from one of the slop tanks was removed from the vessel over the weekend.

— suzanna caldwell, Alaska Dispatch News, "Fishing vessel under pollution watch after it lost power near Unalaska," 21 Aug. 2017
So Systrom gathered a team to sort through massive piles of bilge, buffoonery, and low-grade extortion on the platform.

— WIRED, "Instagram’s Kevin Systrom Wants to Clean Up the Internet," 14 Aug. 2017
If a breach did occur, there are no steel watertight doors that could be sealed, and no way to pump water out because the bilge system is inoperable; any major flooding could cause the ship to sink to the lagoon floor.

— courtney tompkins, Orange County Register, "After years of neglect, the Queen Mary may be ‘approaching the point of no return’," 14 Mar. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'bilge.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.