rubbage

English

Etymology

Possibly from rubb(ish) +‎ -age (suffix forming nouns with the sense of collection or appurtenance).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌbɪd͡ʒ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌbɪd͡ʒ/, /ˈɹə-/
• Hyphenation: rub‧bage

Noun

rubbage (usually uncountable, plural rubbages)

1. (now dialectal) Alternative form of rubbish
   • 1646, John Hall, “A Satire”, in Poems, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Printed by Roger Daniel, printer to the Universitie, for J. Rothwell, […], →OCLC; republished London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816, →OCLC, book I, page 34:

     E'er since poor Cheapside cross in rubbage lay, [...]

   • 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VIII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 65:

     "And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" / "No, sah—nuffn' else."

   • [1939 May 4, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber Limited, →OCLC; republished London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1960, →OCLC, part I, page 17:

     Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstoryshortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubbages on to soil here.]

   • 1959 June, Peter R. Samson, “An Abridged Dictionary of the TMRC Language”, in Personal Web Page of Peter R. Samson‎^[1], published September 2005, archived from the original on 18 January 2019:

     CRUFT: that which magically amounds in the Clubroom just before you walk in to clean up. In other words, rubbage. / [September 2005 commentary]: [...] Rubbage is a rare term for rubbish, but I had heard it used growing up in New England.

   • 1974, G[erald] B[asil] Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, London: Hamish Hamilton, published 1981, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: New York Review Books, 2007, →ISBN, page 209:

     I didn't want him to buy any more rubbage.

Anagrams

• Burbage, bug-bear, bugbear