refuse heap
- noun
- /ˈrɛfjuːs hiːp/
:
montón de basura
- Monstrous refuse heaps accumulate along the shores of the Great Lakes, above which seagulls swoop and cry.
- refuse heap or midden
Examples
-
The children built a fort out of old boxes and scrap materials from the refuse heap.
-
So she had spent the past six months excavating a newly discovered mound that turned out to be the refuse heap of Indians that had lived north of Santa Barbara four thousand years ago.
Fiction book (2002) -
After the party, we collected all the trash into a large refuse heap at the edge of the yard.
-
The workers cleared the refuse heap behind the factory, creating a cleaner environment for the neighborhood.
Synonyms
214
1.1
A place where people leave large amounts of rubbish
9
1.0
A place where people take and leave large amounts of waste
7
4.0
A place where people throw away unwanted things, often illegally
3
2.4
A pile of garbage and old things people throw away
3
4.2
A messy pile of old broken things people throw away
3
4.5
A piece of land where people throw away trash without control
2
2.7
A messy heap of old things that people throw away
1
1.3
A heap of thrown away things like paper and bottles
1
2.3
A large pile of things that people have thrown away
1
2.1
A place where people put waste to be taken away
1
2.7
A pile of waste and old things
1
5.4
A pile of old broken metal and other things kept to be thrown away
1
2.0
A large open area where people leave trash
A pile of dust and old rubbish thrown away
A piece of land where people dump waste from homes and factories
An area of land where people put rubbish
A place that is very dirty and full of trash and bad smells
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
This is a fully compositional noun phrase: 'refuse' (waste) + 'heap' (pile) yields the literal meaning 'a pile of refuse'. The modifier-head pattern is cross-linguistically common (e.g., 'rubbish heap', 'tas de déchets'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Refuse heap comes from a simple picture: a pile of refuse that is left as a heap. That's why it means 'a pile of refuse and things that have been thrown away'.