Skip to content
word of the day

The word for today is…

garbage (noun):

1a : food waste
b : discarded or useless material
2a : trash
b : inaccurate or useless data

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : Middle English, “poultry organs and body parts used for food, poultry refuse,” borrowed from Anglo-French. Garbage (implied in sergant garbagere – “kitchen servant tasked with plucking and cleaning poultry”) Garbage is of obscure origin but on morphological, semantic, or chronological grounds is unlikely to be related to Anglo-French garbeler, Middle English garbelen “to remove (impurities) from spices” or to Middle French gaburge, grabuge “quarrel, brawl.” The Anglo-French collocation ‘sergant garbagere’ indicates currency of the word as early as 1318 (Household Ordinances of Edward II).

If you enjoyed this BFD word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.

Latest

A Warning About the Lung Float Test

A Warning About the Lung Float Test

An exam meant to determine whether a baby was born dead or alive is of “questionable value,” the National Association of Medical Examiners cautions. The paper follows a ProPublica report on how the test had been used against women accused of murder.

Members Public