garbage

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noun gar·bage \ ˈgär-bij \

Updated on: 11 Sep 2017

Definition of garbage

1 a :food waste

b :discarded or useless material

2 a :trash 1b

b :inaccurate or useless data

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Examples of garbage in a Sentence

The park was littered with garbage.
Please take out the garbage.
Raccoons were going through the garbage.
Throw the can in the garbage.
If you ask me, what he said is a bunch of garbage.

Recent Examples of garbage from the Web

Before the ban went into effect, Chege Kariuki, the chairman of the Waste and Environment Management Association of Kenya, said that garbage collectors would be unable to operate without plastic bin liners.

— kimiko de freytas-tamura, New York Times, "In Kenya, Selling or Importing Plastic Bags Will Cost You $19,000 — or Jail," 28 Aug. 2017
Employees at a garbage plant discovered a headless body in a pile of trash Monday afternoon, police said.

— alex harris, miamiherald, "Employees find headless body in Hialeah trash pile," 28 Aug. 2017
In the most on-the-nose moment in the production, the hole that the children finally dig for the building’s foundation eventually becomes a dumping spot for their garbage.

— rick bentley, idahostatesman, "‘Glass Castle’ a devastating look at broken family," 10 Aug. 2017
Two kittens, held by the scruff of their necks, were recently lowered into a garbage can and abandoned.

— max londberg, kansascity, "Man abandons two kittens in KC organization’s garbage, prompting outrage," 8 Aug. 2017
To be able to go from the corner in Queens beatin' on a garbage can to getting a Kennedy Center Honor with this type of company and to be first is just an amazing feeling.

— sam dangremond, Town & Country, "Norman Lear Plans to Boycott the Kennedy Center Honors Reception Because of Trump," 4 Aug. 2017
Soon after, his GPS device was found ditched near a garbage receptacle in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant not far from the Male Community Re-Entry Program facility, officials said.

— david hernandez, sandiegouniontribune.com, "Prison inmate walks away from facility, discards GPS device," 3 Aug. 2017
If garbage is piling up, new digital tools let citizens visit the city’s Facebook page and summon services within seconds.

— george anders, The Atlantic, "The Unexpected Value of the Liberal Arts," 1 Aug. 2017
Second, the painfully obvious truth: The core problem here is that a racist piece of garbage created the listing in the first place.

— jonathan evans, Esquire, "How the Hell Did Walmart Wind Up With a Racial Slur on Its Site?," 18 July 2017

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

Origin and Etymology of garbage

Middle English, "poultry organs and body parts used for food, poultry refuse," borrowed from Anglo-French *garbage (implied in sergant garbagere "kitchen servant tasked with plucking and cleaning poultry"), of obscure origin

Note: On morphological, semantic, or chronological grounds unlikely to be related to Anglo-French garbeler, Middle English garbelen "to remove (impurities) from spices" (see ¹garble) or to Middle French gaburge, grabuge "quarrel, brawl." The Anglo-French collocation sergant garbagere indicates currency of the word as early as 1318 (Household Ordinances of Edward II).

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First Known Use: 15th century

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