Amanda in Evansville, Indiana, says for some reason her family always referred to their garbage disposal as George, a name that functioned as both noun and verb, as in Just put it in George or You can George it now. Might that be something inherited...
Jill in Shelton, Washington, says that when she lived in Southern California, she understood the word garbage to mean food scraps, with trash referring to everything else collected curbside. Historically, garbage has referred to the wet, disgusting...
Train conductors sometimes refer to the caboose as the crummy. The name may derive from the idea of crew workers leaving crumbs and other garbage all over the back of that last car. Gandy dancers are railroad maintenance workers whose synchronized...
Mary Jean Mueckenheim of Windsor, Vt., asks: What’s the origin of the word mutt? Our recent “Double Dog Dare” quiz about mixed-breed dogs has her thinking about that term. She wonders, “Did the word mutt come from the word...
If you see the trash can as half full, does that make you an optimist or a pessimist? Since it’s half full of garbage, as opposed to daisies or puppies, it’s questionable. On the other hand, in the tweeted words of Jill Morris:...
grapple truck n.— «There are trucks which has a grapple loader mounted to its frame and are used to carry bulky waste or garbage are called as Grapple trucks. These trucks are used at construction sites to pick up dirt which has been...
