wastebasket

English

A wastebasket

Etymology

From waste +‎ basket.

Noun

wastebasket (plural wastebaskets)

1. A usually small indoor receptacle for items that are to be discarded; a rubbish bin.
2. (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

• See also Thesaurus:waste bin

Derived terms

• wastebasket taxon

Translations

wastepaper basket — see wastepaper basket

garbage can — see garbage can

Verb

wastebasket (third-person singular simple present wastebaskets, present participle wastebasketing, simple past and past participle wastebasketed)

1. (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.

See also

• wastepaper basket