Meaning

(chiefly Commonwealth) Refuse, waste, garbage, junk, trash..

Definitions by Sense

1. (chiefly Commonwealth) Refuse, waste, garbage, junk, trash.
2. (by extension, chiefly Commonwealth) An item, or items, of low quality.
3. (by extension, chiefly Commonwealth) Nonsense.
4. (archaic) Debris or ruins of buildings; rubble.
5. (chiefly UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, colloquial) Exceedingly bad; awful.
6. Used to express that something is exceedingly bad, awful, or terrible.
7. Used to express that what was recently said is nonsense or untrue; balderdash!, nonsense!
8. (transitive, chiefly UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, colloquial) To criticize, to denigrate, to denounce, to disparage.

Example Sentences

The rubbish is collected every Thursday in Gloucester, but on Wednesdays in Cheltenham.

What traſh is Rome? / What Rubbiſh and what Offall? when it ſerues / For the baſe matter, to illuminate / So vile a thing as Cæsar.

[T]he Employments of the common Ants or Workers […] are partly the Management of the Young, and the Building their little Hills of Straw, Rubbiſh, and Particles of Earth, mixed with Blades of Graſs, into little Mounds or Ramparts, on which to expoſe the Eggs and Nymphs to the Sun-beams; their other great Employment is, in collecting Proviſions.

In the course of this operation [the copper-fastening of new, or the re-coppering of old, vessels], and more especially in a repair of this latter description, old copper nails, stray pieces of bold and sheet copper, with other parings of a similar nature, are lost among the chips, or in the bottom of the dock. These chips are sold at an almost nominal price, as rubbish, to the smelters, who cart them away often in large quantities, burn the chips out, then wash and smelt the remainder, if necessary, in the ordinary manner.

The plaintiff claimed damages from the defendants for a breach of duty in allowing and permitting dirt and rubbish to be thrown or put upon a lane or public highway upon which his premises abutted. It appeared in evidence that the damage complained of was occasioned by the filling in and levelling a hollow in the lane, by means whereof the plaintiff's fence was pressed inwards, the filling in being done by private individuals throwing dirt and rubbish thereon.

Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstoryshortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubbages on to soil here.

[…] I was sleeping with my head on the wooden arm of a seat as six attendants of the theater converged with their night's total of swept-up rubbish and created a huge dusty pile that reached to my nose as I snored head down—till they almost swept me away too. […] Had they taken me with it, Dean would have never seen me again. He would have had to roam the entire United States and look in every garbage pail from coast to coast before he found me embryonically convoluted among the rubbishes of my life, his life, and the life of everybody concerned and not concerned.

Goats are adventurous eaters. They nose around in rubbish looking for scraps of food.

Word Forms

• rubbishes
• rubbage
• more rubbish
• rubbisher
• most rubbish
• rubbishest
• rubbishing
• rubbished

Synonyms for rubbish

Related Words

When Should You Use Rubbish?

Use rubbish when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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