junk.
Miscellaneous items of little value, especially discarded or unwanted items.
Meaning & usage
Miscellaneous items of little value, especially discarded or unwanted items.
This shed is full of junk – will you help me sort it out?
She needs to find a better place to keep her junk [= belongings].
Material or resources of poor quality or low value, especially resources that lack commercial value.
junk food
junk fish; junk trees
Nonsense; gibberish.
The student put down junk for answers just to finish his homework more quickly.
Any narcotic drug, especially heroin.
The genitalia, especially of a male.
Salt beef.
Pieces of old cable or cordage, used for making gaskets, mats, swabs, etc., and when picked to pieces, forming oakum for filling the seams of ships.
A fragment of any solid substance; a thick piece; a chunk.
An entity with no whole; every part is itself a proper part of something larger.
Where this word comes from
From earlier meaning "old refuse from boats and ships", from Middle English junk, jounke, jonk, joynk (“an old cable or rope”, nautical term), sometimes cut into bits and used as caulking; of uncertain origin; perhaps related to join, joint, juncture. Often compared to Middle English junk, jonk, jonke, junck (“a rush; basket made of rushes”), from Old French jonc, from Latin iuncus (“rush, reed”); however, the Oxford English Dictionary finds "no evidence of connexion".
To throw away.
To find something for very little money (meaning derived from the term junkshop)
(On Facebook, a record collector wrote:) "The newest addition to my Annette Hanshaw collection, I junked this beautiful flawless E-copy within walking distance from my house."
To consume junk food, mainly at a fast-food restaurant.
Let's just junk some burgers at McDonald's.
Let me go junking to KFC with you.
Where this word comes from
From earlier meaning "old refuse from boats and ships", from Middle English junk, jounke, jonk, joynk (“an old cable or rope”, nautical term), sometimes cut into bits and used as caulking; of uncertain origin; perhaps related to join, joint, juncture. Often compared to Middle English junk, jonk, jonke, junck (“a rush; basket made of rushes”), from Old French jonc, from Latin iuncus (“rush, reed”); however, the Oxford English Dictionary finds "no evidence of connexion".
A Chinese sailing vessel.
Where this word comes from
From Portuguese junco with reinforcement from Dutch jonk, from Arabic جُنْك (junk), from Malay jong, جوڠ, from Javanese ꦗꦺꦴꦁ (jong), from Old Javanese joṅ (“seagoing ship”), probably from Proto-Mon-Khmer *d₂luuŋ ~ *d₂luŋ ~ *d₂luəŋ ~ *d₂ləŋ (“boat”). Doublet of djong.
Try it on your idea.
junk has 4 characters. Say it out loud, try it alongside a description of your project, and see whether its meaning fits what you want to create.
These are naming prompts. Meanings and pronunciation can vary; existing brand and domain uses have not been checked.
Explore the name generatorA word with a source.
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.