Forms: (? 4 trasche), 6 trasshe, traish, trasse, 6–7 trashe, 7 traisse, 6– trash. [With exception of the doubtful instance in 1 b, known only from 16th c.; origin obscure.
Cf. Norw. dial. trask lumber, trumpery, trash, baggage (which Falk & Torp refer to tras twig, sprig), Icel. tros rubbish, fallen leaves and twigs, and Norw. trase, Sw. trasa rags, tatters.]
1. That which is broken, snapped, or lopped off anything in preparing it for use; broken or torn pieces, as twigs, splinters, ‘cuttings from a hedge, small wood from a copse’ (E.D.D.), straw, rags; refuse.
1555. Bill in Chancery, in Athenæum, 17 July (1886), 92/2. A carpenter’s yarde, wherein he dothe laye his tymber and Trasshe.
1574. Hellowes, Gueuara’s Fam. Ep. (1584), 255. How wil he give wood to the Hospitall, that warmes himself by the trash of straw?
1670. Narborough, Jrnl., in Acc. Sev. Late Voy., I. (1694), 108. The Woods … are so thick with Under-brush, old rotten Trees, and Leaves, and such Trash.
1675. Evelyn, Terra (1729), 45. If you lay any Fern-brakes, or other Trash about them.
a. 1693. Urquhart’s Rabelais, III. l. 401. They break … to very Trash the woody parcels.
1727. Bradley’s Fam. Dict., s.v. Cask, The Trash, or gross Substance of pressed Grapes.
1763. Brit. Mag., IV. 464. The floor being thus prepared,… cover it with wet ground leaves or other tobacco trash.
1867. Baker, Nile Tribut., ii. 53. Bamboos and reeds, with trash of all kinds, were hurried along the muddy waters.
b. An old worn-out shoe. dial.
The first quot. fits the sense; but its date, 150 years before any other example of the word, makes its place doubtful.
[c. 1360. E. E. Allit. P., B. 40. Þen þe harlot with haste helded to þe table With rent cokrez at þe kne & his clutte [= clouted] trasches.]
c. 1746. J. Collier (Tim Bobbin), View Lanc. Dial., Gloss., Trash, unripe fruit; also an over-worn shoe.
1828. Craven Gloss., s.v., In the plural trashes, a pair of worn-out shoes.
1885. Mrs. Banks, In his own Hand, iv. His week’s tramp had … worn his shoes into trashes.
c. Broken ice mixed with water; trash-ice.
1856. Kane, Arct. Expl., I. xxvi. 342. Warped about one hundred yards into the trash.
† d. (?). Obs.
a. 1550[?]. in Brand’s Pop. Antiq. (1849), I. 120. For paulme-flowers, cakes, trashes, and for thred on Palme Sonday, viiid.
2. spec. The refuse of sugar-canes after the juice has been expressed; cane-trash; also, the dried leaves and tops of the canes, stripped off while still growing, to allow them to ripen; field-trash.
1707. Sloane, Jamaica, I. p. xlv. It was the custom to burn their Trash, which is the remainder of the Sugar Canes after the juice is squeezed out.
1790. Castles, in Phil. Trans., LXXX. 349. Burning the cane trash (or straw of the cane). Ibid., 356. The field trash (or the dried leaves and tops of the canes).
1793. J. B. Moreton, W. Ind. Cust., 47. The [sugar-] canes being cut, and all the trash lopped off.
1842. [see CANE sb.1 10].
1884. Macm. Mag., Nov., 19/2. Just before harvest, when the dead leaves or trash are thick around the canes.
3. Anything of little or no worth or value; worthless stuff; rubbish; dross. (Said of things material or immaterial.)
c. 1518. Skelton, Magnyf., 2164. As for his plate of syluer, and suche trasshe.
1604. Shaks., Oth., III. iii. 156. Who steales my purse, steales trash.
1612. T. Taylor, Comm. Titus ii. 14 (1619), 515. What can the Papist say now for his mony-masses, pardons, indulgences, and such trash?
1728. Young, Love Fame, III. 192. Ambition feeds on trash.
1795. Mills, in Phil. Trans., LXXXVI. 43. The great facility with which the gold might be separated from the trash.
1838. Thackeray, 2nd Lect. Fine Arts, Wks. 1900, XIII. 284. Some … new pictures, in the midst of a great quantity of trash.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xix. What poor, mean trash this whole business of human virtue is!
b. spec.: see quot.
1749. Wealth Gt. Britain, 51. There are three kind of mark’d herring among the Dutch;… the last sort are called trash.
c. Worthless notions, talk, or writing; nonsense; ‘rubbish,’ ‘stuff.’
1542. Udall, Erasm. Apoph., E.’s Pref. Like trash & bagguage been those saiynges that are incidente in oracions.
1653. Milton, Hirelings, Wks. 1851, V. 383. Those Theological Disputations … rather perplex and leven pure Doctrin with scholastical Trash.
1737. Fielding, Hist. Register, I. Wks. 1784, III. 319. My Register is not to be fill’d … with trash for want of news.
1874. Burnand, My Time, xxx. 293. Don’t let me hear any more of such trash.
† d. Contemptuously applied to money or cash; ‘dross.’ Obs. slang.
(Cf. quot. 1604 in 3, which has prob. influenced later use.)
a. 1592. Greene, Jas. IV., III. i. And therefore must I bid him provide trash, for my master is no friend without money.
[1601. Shaks., Jul. C., IV. iii. 26. Shall we now, Contaminate our fingers, with base Bribes? And sell … our … Honors For so much trash, as may be grasped thus?]
1742. Young, Nt. Th., VI. 218. Drudge, sweat,… for every gain, For vile contaminating trash.
1809. Malkin, Gil Blas, I. viii. Money! said he,… you have a poor opinion of Spanish charity, if you think that people of my stamp have any occasion for such trash upon their travels.
4. A worthless or disreputable person; now, usually, such persons collectively. White trash, the poor white population in the Southern States of America.
1604. Shaks., Oth., V. i. 85. I do suspect this Trash To be a party in this Iniurie.
1750. Chesterf., Lett., 5 June. Prostitutes, actresses, dancing women, and that sort of trash.
1827. Scott, Chron. Canongate, v. Sheriffs, and bailiffs, and sic thieves and trash of the world.
1831. Burlington Weekly Free Press, 20 May, 1/1. I read in dis paper dat dey make a law for low white trash fur marry into fust colered circles.
1883. Fiske, in Harper’s Mag., Feb., 423/1. North Carolina was the paradise of the ‘white trash.’
5. attrib. and Comb., as trash-eater, -monger, -reader, roof; trash-lined adj.; trash-bag: see quot. 1688; also, old shoes; also, a disreputable or worthless person (dial.); trash-house, a building on a sugar-plantation where the stalks from which the juice has been expressed are stored for fuel; trash-ice, broken ice mixed with water (cf. 1 c); trash-rack, a rack set in a stream to prevent the passage of floating debris; trash-reader, a critical reader of novels and the like for a publisher; trash-turner, a metal plate in a sugar-mill, that guides the canes between pairs of rollers (Webster, 1911).
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. xxii. (Roxb.), 278/1. A *Trash Bagg, of some called an Apron, wherein are seuerall pocketts … to place the seuerall implyments … which the Angler hath occasion to use.
1886. S. W. Linc. Gloss., s.v., That son of hern’s a regular trashbags.
1887. S. Cheshire Gloss., Trash-bag, (1) a person whose boots or clothes are dirty, and generally who is slovenly in dress or habits, (2) in pl. old shoes.
1712. Steele, Spect., No. 431, ¶ 3. Find out some Name for these craving Damsels,… *Trash-eaters, Oatmeal-chewers, Pipe-champers [etc.].
1793. J. B. Moreton, W. Ind. Cust., 48. The canes … are … spread about the works till they dry, and then … carried to a long large shade, called a *trash-house, where they are piled, as being the only fuel for boiling the sugar.
1864. Webster, *Trash-ice, crumbled ice mixed with water.
1891. Cent. Dict., cites Kane.
1894. J. E. Humphrey in Pop. Sci. Monthly, XLIV. 496. Placed in *trash-lined bins.
1694. Motteux, Rabelais, V. 236. *Trashmongers and Spanglemakers.
1603. Florio, Montaigne, I. li. (1632), 167. Metonymia, Metaphore, Allegorie, Etimologie, and other such *trashnames of Grammar.
1913. J. B. Bishop, Panama Gateway, V. ii. 3. The entrances [of the penstocks] are closed by cast-iron head-gates and bar-iron *trash-racks.
1757. Smollett, Lett., 12 May, in J. Irving, Bk. Dumbarton. (1879), II. 197. Employed as a *trash reader for the Critical Review.
1902. in Daily Rec. & Mail, 23 Aug., 5. Fine ash and sand rained down … with occasional showers of large stones. Some … were so hot as to set fire to the *‘trash’ roofs of huts … seven miles from the crater.
Hence Trashify v., trans. to turn into trash, render trashy; Trashless a., free from trash, purified from worthless elements.
1663. Sir G. Mackenzie, Relig. Stoic, 36. Not suffering him to lay over his vitiousness upon Providence, a shift too ordinar amongst such as misunderstand the trashless Doctrine of the reformed Churches.
1831. Examiner, 132/2. Thus is trash thrice trashified.
