rubbish
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
Refuse, waste, garbage, junk.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ruhbishSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɹʌbɪʃ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
chiefly commonwealth
Refuse, waste, garbage, junk, trash.
by extensionchiefly commonwealth
An item, or items, of low quality.
by extensionchiefly commonwealth
Nonsense.
adjective
chiefly ukirelandcommonwealthcolloquial
Exceedingly bad; awful.
verb
transitivechiefly ukirelandcommonwealthcolloquial
To criticize, to denigrate, to denounce, to disparage.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Refuse, waste, garbage, junk, trash.
Used this way, rubbish is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use rubbish
- “This has been a rubbish day, and it's about to get worse: my mother-in-law is coming to stay.”adjective
- “The rubbish is collected every Thursday in Gloucester, but on Wednesdays in Cheltenham.”noun
- “Much of what they sell is rubbish.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A piece of land where waste materials are dumped.
An accumulation of refuse and discarded matter.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.