Talk:garbage

garbage
Rfd-redundant X 3:
 * 1) Leftover waste or scraps or material deemed useless or disposable.
 * 2) Space debris,
 * 3) (attributive, informal) Worthless.

I have:
 * 1) reworded the offal sense inherited from Webster 1913 as "food waste".
 * 2) added a sense: "something or someone worthless." intended to absorb the attributive sense "worthless" above.
 * 3) added a sense: Any worthless material, which is intended to absorb the first sense above.

The "space debris" sense seems already included in one or more of the other senses and not to be inherent in the word out of context.

My objection to having an attributive sense for one, but not all, of the senses is that it can be taken as implying that all attributive use of the word has the meaning "worthless". At an abattoir, "garbage collection" handles food waste, in a computer it would handle recovery of formerly used and now unused memory, etc. IOW, almost any noun sense has an associated attributive use. DCDuring TALK 17:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

deleted all -- Prince Kassad 09:16, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Use in Australia
I added Australia to the "chiefly US, Canada" because "garbage" is in widespread use in Australia. "Rubbish" is arguably more common, but "garbage" is commonly used and productive – consider the Australianisms garbo and garbologist (sense 2). SJK (talk) 04:02, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * See also Australian Word Map which contains evidence that the word "garbage" is widely used in Australia (and has been for decades), although there is obviously a regional element to it. (It appears in Sydney it has been an accepted part of Australian English for decades, whereas in some other parts of Australia, such as WA, it may be more viewed as an Americanism.) SJK (talk) 04:13, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. A word doesn't have to be the most common term to still be popular. And "garbo" for the people who collect the stuff has been common usage in Perth for more 50 years. (In fact, I'm 55 years old and I can't remember them being called anything else.) "Garbage" is also common usage for "nonsense" in Perth. I think its an alternate term in Perth, not an "Americanism" on those bases alone.
 * Grant65 (talk) 12:19, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

etymology
The Middle English term is the same, "garbage". I do not know how to edit the code.--Manfariel (talk) 17:45, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

RFD discussion: December 2021
I don't think it's an adjective, just a noun used attributively. "garbage advice" is already in the quotation. --General Vicinity (talk) 01:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Citable:, Fytcha (talk) 01:52, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * May I mention again that apparent comparatives and superlatives do not IMO necessarily prove adjectiveness, or at least not to the extent to justify an entry. For example, one could cite "a more New York accent", or "the most Reagan of ways", or whatever, but I don't think this means we should have adjective senses for "New York" or "Reagan". Mihia (talk) 10:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing this out to me. Is there any test to find out whether a word can be an adjective then? Fytcha (talk) 16:05, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * English_adjectives lists various tests. In practice, I think a combination of tests plus "intuition" is sensible. Even if a word passes a test in terms of patterns or forms being citable, it may still not "feel" like a true adjective, or adjectival use may be too marginal for us to list. Some cases are very borderline or debatable (e.g. "substance" cases, such as "brick wall"). Mihia (talk) 17:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You can check out rubbish, the British equivalent, and form an opinion from that. DonnanZ (talk) 00:22, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It's easier to find rubbishest than garbagest fwiw General Vicinity (talk) 18:43, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe if it's qualified by an adverb rather than an adjective? e.g. "pretty garbage" as in the usex and "completely garbage". General Vicinity (talk) 16:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the input above, I've convinced myself it can be an adjective so I'll withdraw if there are no objections. General Vicinity (talk) 17:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * IMO it probably just about passes as an adjective. Mihia (talk) 23:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Anecdotally, I think this has recently become more adjectival. (Brits don't usually talk about "garbage" in the noun sense: it would be "rubbish", "refuse" or "waste".) There's a lot of recent net slang like "he is a garbage human being", or "that was a garbage take" (i.e. a bad viewpoint). Equinox ◑ 04:09, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
 * As a BrE speaker, I would tend not to use "garbage" literally as a noun to mean "refuse" (to me this feels rather like an Americanism), but I would use the noun sense non-literally, as in "that's garbage" or "what a pile of garbage" in order to disparage something. Mihia (talk) 10:31, 26 December 2021 (UTC)