the.com/junk
one person's trash is a hoarder's retirement plan and an archaeologist's jackpot.
means Stuff that's worthless, broken, or no longer wanted — the cluttered category for things too useless to keep but too vaguely promising to throw away.
from The oldest 'junk' was nautical: in Middle English a 'junk' meant a length of old rope or worn-out cable too frayed to trust at sea. Sailors saved this discarded cordage and picked it apart for oakum to caulk seams, so 'junk' came to mean cheap leftover odds and ends — and from there spread to all manner of trash and worthless gear. (Note the separate 'junk' meaning the Asian sailing ship is a different word entirely, borrowed via Portuguese from a Malay or Javanese term, so don't let the two ropes tangle.)
- sailing ship
- Chinese junk ships dominated seas for centuries
- space debris
- 36000 tracked junk pieces orbit Earth daily
- DNA
- so-called junk DNA actually regulates genes
- junk drawer
- nearly every home has one universal chaos zone
- food slang
- junk food coined in the 1950s
great pacific garbage patch — massive accumulation of microplastics in the north pacific ocean covering an area twice the size of texas
fresh kills landfill — former new york city landfill that received 29,000 tons of waste daily until its 2001 closure
svalbard global seed vault — arctic storage facility in norway preserving 4.1 million crop seed samples against global catastrophe