Are Garbage and Trash the Same Thing?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jill. I’m calling from Shelton, Washington.

Hi, Jill. Welcome to the show.

What can we do for you, Jill?

I moved up here from San Diego almost two years ago.

So I’m here now in Washington.

And of course, when I wanted to get settled, I wanted to get trash pickup service.

So as it turns out, the service is called Mason County Garbage and Recycling.

And just the word garbage kind of struck me as that’s not the right word for what I want done.

I want my trash picked up. Garbage is food scraps, so I just thought, oh, there must be a trash pickup company.

So I called him up and tried to state my case, and of course I was spoken to as if I was loony.

But as it turns out, in Southern California we have garbage disposers, and so that’s where I got this well-entrenched idea that garbage was food scraps and you had a trash compactor for the other kind of stuff.

But up here, garbage means all kinds of trash, the junk you take to the dump.

Everything, it’s all garbage. So I’m sort of tired of arguing with people up here. I need to just go with the flow, but I think it’s the wrong word.

Jill, it might go deeper than just you getting it from a garbage disposal. There are a lot of people who would agree with you. Historically, garbage has been for a lot of people the wet gross stuff that you throw away.

So it would be the food waste, the vegetable matter, or anything that had vegetable or food matter in and on it, something that couldn’t be recycled.

And then the trash would be the dry waste, paper, wood, metal, that sort of stuff.

Your usage does reflect the original senses, not that etymology is destiny for words, but if you go way, way back, garbage is the older term, and it originally referred to offal and entrails and guts.

And in fact, in the early 14th century, Edward II, King of England, had a sergeant garbager who was the officer of the royal kitchen responsible for gutting animal carcasses.

So it has a very, very old sense there. And trash is a weird word too. Its original sense was something that anything that’s broken or snapped off, which could be twigs or cuttings from vegetable matter, and it’s meant a lot of different things.

The one that I like is that trash, I’m looking at a 1763 glossary that says that trash can be unripe fruit, also an overworn shoe.

Overworn shoe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Apparently, yeah, this is a thing.

There are references to people who wear their shoes into trashes.

Oh, that’s a great insult.

You overworn shoe, you.

You trash.

You trash.

You overwit you.

But do people still keep the can under the sink for food waste that’s not compost?

I mean, that used to be a thing, right?

Some people do.

Some people separate the garbage from the trash because you really don’t want to mix your garbage into your trash.

You want your trash to be your paper waste and food wrappings and things like that.

And if you don’t empty your trash regularly and have garbage in it, it sort of changes the composition of your trash can and the smell of it and everything.

So, yeah, I keep my garbage separate and then I put it in a plastic bag and put it in the trash before the trash pickup day.

Well, Jill, it sounds like you feel better.

No, I do feel better knowing that I’m not alone in this opinion.

But you’re not alone, but the distinction is blurred for a lot of people throughout the English-speaking world.

But let’s not even get started on all the garbage and trash terms in the U.K.

Where we talk about rubbish and dustbins and skips and tips and fly tips.

It’s just a whole other lexicon.

I think we just got started, Grant.

No, stop.

Bye.

Thanks, Jill.

Take care of yourself.

We appreciate your call.

Okay.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Jill.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye.

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