What do you call trash?

American here. I use garbage mostly, trash occasionally. I only use rubbish to mean "nonsense!" Although now, with all the separation of "garbage" we use "garbage" for the stuff that doesn't go into any recycle bin. Then there's "yard waste" (which includes anything from the kitchen that can be composted), and "recycle bin" which is the glass, metal, paper, plastics and recyclable styrofoams.

Australian here. Trash (noun) is the stuff left on a sugar cane field after harvesting. Trash (verb) is to make a mess of. Stuff you throw out is rubbish or garbage. People can be all three.

That's interesting. I had no idea those were official categories. I use rubbish, as in "I'm just going to put this rubbish in the bin." I haven't heard many British people use trash or garbage.

I use garbage or trash interchangeably for the most part, I think. When people refer to garbage as "rubbish" I think of outdoor trash. Not yard waste or anything that would/could be composted, necessarily, but as in sharing the same root word as "rubble."

I generally call it trash, whether at home or at the office, but either one works for me. Garbage sounds more appropriate for household stuff.

I tend to think of rubbish as something a little cleaner than garbage. It also seems to be something that is leftover or in excess.

'When he finished building the desk, he cleaned up the rubbish that he left behind.'
'After cutting the tree down, he moved the branches into a rubbish pile beside the fence.'
'She took the rubbish out to the garbage bin'

Trash seems a little more active or deliberate or degenerative.

'The bookcase had been trashed. Loose pages from the books were swept into a rubbish pile before she took them to the garbage bin.'
'He felt trashed after partying the night before'
'She wore a trashy outfit, which revealed plenty of thigh.'
'Her name was trashed around town.'

Just some thoughts!

Slightly off-topic, but my grandparents always referred to a wastepaper basket as a "scrap trap". I always liked that phrase (maybe because it was them saying it), but I don't think I've heard anyone outside my family ever use it.

Do any of you?

wastepaper basket = the round folder
rubbish = things you say and I don't like , also small things that go into the bin
garbage =big things that go in the bin
trash = type of people

Oh, I thought this was going to be a discussion about trashy novels. In the California desert, Mom waits for Dad to come home from work so he can take out the (household) trash. There's garbage in it and the first half of her failed romance novel, beer cans and junk mail. Where we live, we don't have to separate our garbage and plastics and metal cans -- they all go in a big dumpster that is hauled away in a big truck. We're not supposed to throw batteries, electronic equipment and old refrigerators in the trash.

Refuse.


No, I'm not declining to answer the question. That's the word we use here - 'refuse', with the emphasis on the first syllable.

Ref'use a & n. What is rejected as worthless or left over after use. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary.)

Evidently, we S. Africans like to use larney words but, here in Jo'burg, the word 'refuse' has something of a stink about it. Our municipal 'refuse' removal company - known by the optimistic name of Pikitup - doesn't do the job because the refuse workers are on strike more often than they are at work. But not only do these workers refuse to remove the refuse, they act out their anger by emptying it all over the streets.

Pretty, isn't it?

So, one could say... Striking South African refuse workers (although they're really not very good-looking) trashed the streets of Johannesburg today, emptying garbage bags and strewing rubbish across pavements and walkways and leaving stinking piles of waste in their wake.

*scratches head* I think there must be something seriously wrong with me and my family. I can't recall the last time any of us used the words garbage, refuse, trash, rubbish, or any of those. When we do talk about stuff that needs to be chucked, it's usually a variation on "Put it in the bin." Or for the weekly trash pickup, it'd be "Oh, don't forget to do the bins."

I find it mildly disturbing that I'm not even sure which of these words I would use if I tried. I mean, all of them seem equally useful in generic situations.

Brit here.

"Rubbish" is anything that you throw out. It's also used figuratively, e.g. "that film was total rubbish". Trash and garbage are used in British English in the figurative meaning, but in my dialect they're rarely used to describe the actual stuff that you throw out. If you "take out the trash" that sounds American. If you "put the rubbish out" that sounds more British (albeit that there are massive dialectual differences in Britain so there are probably many different British ways of saying this - my dialect's from SE England). The word "refuse" (used as a noun and pronounced the noun way) and "waste" are used in a more formal context. For example, the two large bins outside the flats where I live are labelled "general waste" and "recyclables". If the rubbish won't fit in the bin(s)* supplied by the council you have to take it to the tip. At the tip they probably call it all refuse.

*if you live in a house you get a wheelie bin (usually 2 - one black, one green, although some councils have green boxes for recyclables), but because I live in a flat we get two very large communal bins for the whole block of flats. They have wheels on them but they're not wheelie bins because wheelie bins have to be a particular size and shape to qualify as a wheelie bin. Apparently once a Wandsworth Council wheelie bin was found floating in the Sea of Galilee, but generally speaking wheelie bins stay outside your house and only travel between your house and the bin lorry. The much larger, communal bins for flats are big enough to hold the rubbish for everyone in the flats, unless someone goes to Ikea and fills the recyclables one with empty flat-pack boxes, then no-one else can put their recyclables out until Wednesday morning after the bin men come.

Anna_Hedley said:

That's interesting. I had no idea those were official categories. I use rubbish, as in "I'm just going to put this rubbish in the bin." I haven't heard many British people use trash or garbage.

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In the eastern U.S. I've always used trash for any waste. We call the kitchen receptacle a 'trash can', 'garbage can' or 'can' for short, but it seems others refer to it as a 'bin'. We call the large green receptacle that we haul to the curb for pick-up a 'toter' since we have to tote it to the curb every week.

I'm from the North Eastern US. Trash and garbage are pretty interchangeable. Take out the trash. Take out the garbage. Garbage can. Trash can. I have a vague sense that we leaned toward 'garbage' when I was small, and that 'trash' has slowly caught up and maybe overtaken it. Because there are some phrases that don't seem to work as well (or at all) with 'trash': garbage dump, garbage truck.

We call it the bins or the recycling. What goes in the bins tends to be rubbish. But it's the bins that go out on Tuesdays. We say garbage truck. And Oscar lives in a trash can. But bins is our word.

In the U.S. Air Force when we tossed papers in the trash can we'd say, "Sending to File 13--circular disposition."

Military stuff, yaknowwhatimean?

It's all trash (or recycling) to me.

"Toss that in the trash."
"Take the trash out, please."
"Empty the trashcan in the kitchen."

Depends on which word rhymes or fits the best:

Take out the papers and the trash,
Or you don't get no spendin' cash.

Get all that garbage outta sight,
Or you don't go out Friday night.

Before shredders, our U.S. Army circular files went to the incinerator.

American Trash, here. Wow, the thoughts you have for no reason. I remember going to a concert, a famous guy, my friend was in his band. This was in my friend's hometown, and this guy, this famous guy, when introducing his band, when he got to my friend he said, "He's from here, and you know what they say: Trash begets trash."

Why no one stormed the stage I still don't know.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Garbage: kitchen waste OR the adjective in the Garbage Truck
Trash: any stuff that needs to be taken out for the Garbage Truck OR a verb meaning to destroy OR a condescending term for a person of low education
Rubbish: Nonsense
Bins: Things to use to hold flour and sugar and such like

US West Coast

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Trash or garbage interchangeably. Rubbish doesn't come naturally, and I think that if I tried to adopt it I'd get weird looks from my friends (East Coast US). There may be some nuances in how I interchange the words, but I can't put my finger on what they are (I think that trash is slightly cleaner than garbage. There's trash on my bedroom floor. There isn't any garbage. Similarly, if a book is trash, it might still be able to achieve guilty pleasure status. If it's garbage, it sucks.)

I call it either garbage or just trash.

I'm in the midwestern United States. Trash and garbage are generally used interchangeably, although I have a preference for trash in conversation. It's the utility of just the one syllable.

As far as Marlys' bit, trash dump just sounds awkward to my ear. And although garbage truck and dump truck are the same, I've only on rare occasions ever heard anyone say trash truck. That's not very common.