garbage

noun gar·bage \ ˈgär-bij \

|Updated on: 11 Jun 2018

Examples: garbage in a Sentence

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

Many lost possessions as city garbage trucks collected their belongings to clear the sidewalks.

— maya dukmasova, Chicago Reader, "Housing / Politics Fight for right to camp on city streets will continue despite legal setback, homeless advocates say," 7 June 2018
In the late 1980s, the Jersey Shore’s reputation was garbage.

— darryl fears, Washington Post, "Why New Jersey is leading the resistance to Trump’s offshore drilling plan," 27 May 2018
But my basic Kansas City Barbecue Take is that most Kansas City Barbecue Takes are garbage.

— sam mellinger, kansascity, "Mellinger Minutes: KU & the FBI, Royals & stinking, Vermes & Reid switching jobs & more | The Kansas City Star," 17 Apr. 2018
There was garbage around seats, pockets and aisles.

— dawn gilbertson, azcentral, "Southwest Airlines named best U.S. carrier, but not every passenger feels the LUV," 10 Apr. 2018
Like many platforms, Reddit has struggled to convert its huge audience into a stable revenue stream, and its representatives spend a lot of time trying to convince potential advertisers that Reddit is not hot garbage.

— jane mayer, The New Yorker, "Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet," 12 Mar. 2018
Sometimes good things happen to good people and the entire world isn't garbage.

— laura beck, Cosmopolitan, "Waitress Goes Viral for Doing the Right Thing and She's Rewarded in the Most Amazing Way," 10 Mar. 2018
The vow, honor and responsibility are garbage if the person who takes the oath doesn’t care.

— mac engel, star-telegram, "Nassar case a tragic breakdown of adult supervision," 24 Jan. 2018
Shutting down: The government, apparently, will be shutting this weekend because Congress is garbage.

— dan sweeney, Sun-Sentinel.com, "Power Lunch: Legislature wraps up week 2, mayoral race turns ugly," 19 Jan. 2018

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).

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 15th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year