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trash

Pronunciation: /tɹæʃ/

The English word “trash” has 16 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Useless physical things to be discarded; rubbish; refuse.
  2. A container into which things are discarded.
  3. Something worthless or of poor quality.
  4. Media, such as movies and novels, that are entertaining but unsophisticated, crass or aimed at the lowest common denominator.
  5. A dubious assertion, either for appearing untrue or for being excessively boastful.
  6. The disused stems, leaves, or vines of a crop, sometimes mixed with weeds, which will either be plowed in as green manure or be removed by raking, grazing, or burning.
  7. Loose-leaf tobacco of a low grade, with much less commercial value than the principal grades.
  8. People of low social status or class. (See, for example, white trash or Eurotrash.)
  9. A fan who is excessively obsessed with their fandom and its fanworks.
  10. Temporary storage on disk for files that the user has deleted, allowing them to be recovered if necessary.

verb

  1. To discard.
  2. To make into a mess.
  3. To beat soundly in a game.
  4. To treat as trash, or worthless matter; hence, to spurn, humiliate, or disrespect.
  5. To free from trash, or worthless matter; hence, to lop; to crop.
  6. To hold back by a trash or leash, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard, encumber, or restrain; to clog; to hinder vexatiously.

Etymology

From Middle English trasch, trassh, probably a dialectal form of *trass (compare Orkney truss, English dialectal trous), from Old Norse tros (“rubbish, fallen leaves and twigs”), perhaps related to Proto-Germanic *þrakjaz (“dirt”). Pokorny instead derives it from Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”). Compare Norwegian trask (“lumber, trash, baggage”), Swedish trasa (“rag, cloth, worthless fellow”),…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.