Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An obsolete or dialectal form of rubbish.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete Rubbish.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun now dialectal Alternative form of rubbish.

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • (noun) - (1) Rubbish. Whether the form here given, or rubbige, be the better, it is neither worth contesting, nor possible to ascertain. Both are Old English and used even by very eminent bishops . . . Mr. Todd has taken the pains to vindicate both from the charge of corruption, facetiously but unfortunately made by Mr. Pegge. If there be any corruption at all, it is rubbish itself.

    --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    (2) From rub, as perhaps meaning, at first, dust made by rubbing.

    --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

    (3) Provincial English; rubbrish was used in the exact sense of what we now usually call rubble, and the two words rubbish and rubble are closely connected. William Horman in his Vulgaria 1519 says that ". . . great rubbrysshe serveth to fyl up the myddell of the wall."

    --Walter Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1879

    January 15, 2018