A Waste of Words

A couple of words recommended themselves for this blog on this week’s trip to Alaska. The hotel at which I was staying had a room in which you were encouraged to deposit your “refuse.” It occurred to me that refuse as a noun is somewhat different in meaning from refuse the verb. How could two words like refuse come into English. Are they connected etymologically?

The answer is yes. The first to make its way into English was the verb, which originally meant reject, disregard or avoid; it now means very much the same thing, although the uses disregard and avoid have been disregarded and should be avoided. Refuse as a verb now means to decline to accept or give or submit or (if you are a horse) leap. It came from the Old French word refuser in about 1300 (according to etymonline.com) and the Old French got their word from the Vulgar Latins (many of whom drive sporty convertible cars) whose word refusare came from a form of the Latin word refundere, which meant to pour back or give back and from which we get our word refund. So refund and refuse are cousins.

The noun refuse developed shortly after the verb (about 50 years later). It was originally used to refer to an outcast, then to anything rejected, including waste and trash. The Old French word from which it came was refus, a back-formation of the word refuser from which we get the verb. The noun now identifies anything discarded, including (according to Dictionary.com) rubbish, trash and garbage.

Those who read this blog religiously (and prayer is never a bad idea when reading this blog) may see a diversion to other words coming. Why do we have several words for that which we discard? What is the difference between refuse and waste and garbage and rubbish?

Let’s begin with waste, which according to Dictionary.com is a useless expenditure or something neglected or eroding or devastated. But that does not explain its use as a close cousin to garbage. According to etymonline.com waste has been used since about 1400 in the sense of refuse matter (although "waste basket" first appeared in 1850.) Merriam-Webster.com provides no more appropriate definition but does include a meaning “an action or use that results in the unnecessary loss of something valuable.” So what you put in a waste basket is not likely waste until dictionaries catch up with usage. What a waste! The word wast from which we get waste is an Anglo-French and Old North French word; its entry into English, beginning about 1200, was originally to describe desolate regions, not that which is discarded.

Garbage primarily refers to animal or vegetable matter that is discarded, but has expanded to include anything thrown out. It came to English in the early 1400s to describe first the giblets of a fowl, then the waste parts of any animal, and by 1580 developed the meaning we have today. It may come from Old French or Proto-German, but there is no certain etymology.

Rubbish is unwanted material being thrown out or rejected. It appeared about the same time as garbage, in about 1400, (must have been a dirty century) and came from the Anglo-French word rubouses.  Where the Old French got the word is lost in the dustbin of history (as Leon Trotsky would have put it). While it is not exclusively  British in use it is used more so in Britain (and perhaps other parts of the erstwhile British Empire) than in the United States.

Trash? Also things unwanted and thrown away. But unlike most of the other words, this one likely comes from Scandinavia, since several Scandinavian languages have similar words, usually for leaves and twigs more than animals or vegetables.

So there is really very little difference between the words. You can refuse to use whichever ones you wish; discard the rest. It's a waste of words.