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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

garbage.

Food waste material of any kind.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡɑː.bɪd͡ʒ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/Canada, General-American/ˈɡaː.bɪd͡ʒ/Australia
  1. Food waste material of any kind.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
  2. Foul, rotten or unripe vegetable matter.

    Australia · Canada · Cumbria · England · US · archaic · dialectal · uncountable
  3. Useless or disposable material; waste material of any kind.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
    The garbage truck collects all residential municipal waste.
  4. Specifically, waste material destined not to be reclaimed through recycling, composting, etc.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
    Compost goes in the brown bin and is picked up Monday, recycling goes in blue bags and is picked up Wednesday, and garbage goes in black bags and is picked up Thursday.
    Oh, don't put the empty milk jug in that bin—that one's for garbage.
  5. A place or receptacle for waste material.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
    He threw the newspaper into the garbage.
  6. Nonsense; gibberish.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
    This machine translation is garbage.
  7. Something or someone worthless.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
  8. The bowels of an animal; refuse parts of flesh; offal.

    Australia · Canada · US · obsolete · uncountable
  9. An easy shot.

    Australia · Canada · US · attributive · slang · uncountable
  10. Allocated memory which is no longer in use but has not yet been deallocated.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
  11. Data that are misinterpreted as another kind of data.

    Australia · Canada · US · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From late Middle English garbage (“the offal of a fowl, giblets, kitchen waste”, originally “refuse, what is purged away”), from Anglo-Norman, from Old French garber (“to refine, make neat or clean”), of Germanic origin, from Frankish *garwijan (“to make ready”). Akin to Old High German garawan (“to prepare, make ready”), Old English ġearwian (“to make ready, adorn”). More at garb, yare, gear

verb/ˈɡɑː.bɪd͡ʒ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/Canada, General-American/ˈɡaː.bɪd͡ʒ/Australia
  1. to eviscerate

    Australia · Canada · US · obsolete · transitive
Where this word comes from

From late Middle English garbage (“the offal of a fowl, giblets, kitchen waste”, originally “refuse, what is purged away”), from Anglo-Norman, from Old French garber (“to refine, make neat or clean”), of Germanic origin, from Frankish *garwijan (“to make ready”). Akin to Old High German garawan (“to prepare, make ready”), Old English ġearwian (“to make ready, adorn”). More at garb, yare, gear

adj/ˈɡɑː.bɪd͡ʒ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɡɑɹ.bɪd͡ʒ/Canada, General-American/ˈɡaː.bɪd͡ʒ/Australia
  1. bad, crap, shitty

    Australia · Canada · US · informal · not-comparable
Where this word comes from

From late Middle English garbage (“the offal of a fowl, giblets, kitchen waste”, originally “refuse, what is purged away”), from Anglo-Norman, from Old French garber (“to refine, make neat or clean”), of Germanic origin, from Frankish *garwijan (“to make ready”). Akin to Old High German garawan (“to prepare, make ready”), Old English ġearwian (“to make ready, adorn”). More at garb, yare, gear

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.