wastebasket
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English
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/Wastepaperbin.jpg/220px-Wastepaperbin.jpg)
Etymology
[edit]Noun
[edit]wastebasket (plural wastebaskets)
- A usually small indoor receptacle for items that are to be discarded; a rubbish bin.
- (figurative, by extension) Any region or grouping that is worthless or meaningless.
- 2017, Russell Tuttle, The Functional and Evolutionary Biology of Primates, page 122:
- The order Insectivora provides such a taxonomic wastebasket in classifications of the placental mammals.
- 2008, Harald Burger, Dmitrij Dobrovol'skij, Peter Kühn, Phraseologie / Phraseology, volume 2, page 819:
- For these reasons, the study of idioms, proverbs, stock metaphors, and other conversational gambits has been mostly discouraged, and at best relegated to research in pragmatics, or the “linguistic wastebasket” […]
Synonyms
[edit]- See also Thesaurus:waste bin
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]wastepaper basket — see wastepaper basket
garbage can — see garbage can
Verb
[edit]wastebasket (third-person singular simple present wastebaskets, present participle wastebasketing, simple past and past participle wastebasketed)
- (transitive) To discard in a wastebasket.
- ante 1924 (posthumous, died 1910): Mark Twain, Autobiography
- I was aweary, aweary, and I put it in the waste basket. Ten days later the bill came again, and with it a shadowy threat. I waste-basketed it.
- ante 1924 (posthumous, died 1910): Mark Twain, Autobiography