Trash is discarded waste material that people throw away because it's no longer useful or wanted. The banana peel from your lunch, a broken toy, an empty juice box: all trash. Every household produces trash daily, which typically gets collected in bags or bins and taken to landfills or recycling centers.

The word also means something of very poor quality. A movie with terrible acting and a ridiculous plot might be called trash. If someone describes a book as trash, they think it's poorly written and not worth reading. When you trash your room, you make it messy and chaotic, leaving it looking like a garbage dump.

As a verb, trash can mean to severely damage or destroy something. Rowdy guests might trash a hotel room, breaking furniture and making a mess. To trash-talk someone means to insult them or speak badly about them, often to undermine their confidence, like when basketball players trash-talk opponents during a game.

People also use “trash” to describe cruel criticism or disrespect toward others. Calling someone trash or treating them like trash is disrespectful.