Trash Meaning
/tɹæʃ/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounUseless physical things to be discarded; rubbish; refuse.
nounA container into which things are discarded.
Sentence Examples
There's no use for plastic supermarket bags aside from putting trash in them.
They fine you in Singapore if you throw trash in the streets.
There is a big movement today to recycle trash.
CEFR Practice Quiz
After the party, the kitchen was full of ____ including empty bottles and dirty napkins.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Please remember to take the ____ out to the main bin tonight so that it can be collected tomorrow morning today.
Word Origin & History
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”), Swedish trås (“dry fallen twigs, wood-waste”). Compare also Old English þreax (“rottenness, rubbish”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin."
— 1828, Walter Savage Landor, “Robert Southey and Porson”, in Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:
"Fatcat also fails to warn you that unformatting will trash any files copied to the unintentionally formatted disk."
— 1989 December 18, InfoWorld, page 66:
"the ancient practice of trashing ratoons i.e. stripping them of their outward leaves"
— 1793, Bryan Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies:
"I fled too; But not so fast , —your jewel had been lost then, Young Hengo there; he trashed ' me"
— c. 1613 (first performance), John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Bonduca”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
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CEFR Practice Quiz
After the party, the kitchen was full of ____ including empty bottles and dirty napkins.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Please remember to take the ____ out to the main bin tonight so that it can be collected tomorrow morning today.