noun
- discarded animal and vegetable matter, as from a kitchen; refuse.
- any matter that is no longer wanted or needed; trash.
- anything that is contemptibly worthless, inferior, or vile: There’s nothing but garbage on TV tonight.
- worthless talk; lies; foolishness.
- Slang. any unnecessary item added to something else, as for appearance only; garnish: I’ll have an Old Fashioned, but without the garbage.
- useless artificial satellites or parts of rockets floating in space, as satellites that are no longer transmitting information or rocket boosters jettisoned in flight.
- Computers. meaningless or unwanted data: That program was not properly debugged and produced nothing but garbage.
noun
- worthless, useless, or unwanted matter
- Also called: rubbish discarded or waste matter; refuse
- computing invalid data
- informal nonsense
early 15c., “giblets of a fowl, waste parts of an animal,” later confused with garble in its sense of “siftings, refuse.” Perhaps some senses derive from Old French garbe “a bundle of sheaves, entrails,” from Proto-Germanic *garba- (cf. Dutch garf, German garbe “sheaf”), from PIE *ghrebh- “a handful, a grasp.” Sense of “refuse, filth” is first attested 1580s; used figuratively for “worthless stuff” from 1590s. Garbology “study of waste as a social science” is from 1976.