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garbage man

garbage man

19 1.7
A person who collects trash from homes and takes it away
  • noun
  • /ˈɡɑrbɪdʒ mæn/
  • US
translation icon : recolector de basura
  • Before he left last Sunday night, Gort must have carried them all out the front door and piled them at the curb for the garbage men.
  • garbage men take
  • garbage man who picked
  • garbage man came

And then the if the garbage man doesn't come, what happens?

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Examples

  • During his first summer in the park in 1969, working as a garbage man, he tacked a topographic map of Yellowstone above his bed.

    Blog text (12)
  • I said, "it looks like the garbage man forgot to take out the trash."

  • Mine is a small town garbage man with nothing to lose.

  • You clean up pretty well for a garbage man.

  • I am the garbage man.

  • You know, nobody was in it, so the garbage man will come and pick it up.

  • And honestly, my brother was a garbage man and made more than I do now.

    Blog text (8)
  • The garbage men take the cans off the Tortoise's back and dump them into the truck.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • Garbage men down a block wordlessly fed black bags into the beetle-backed hydraulic pits of their crunching, beeping machines.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • Every Thursday, I watch the garbage man collect the bins from the street.

Synonyms

garbageman
vsgarbage man
  • US
6 3.0

A person who collects trash from homes or shops

is identical role but written as two words
garbage collector
vsgarbage man
  • US
4 2.1

A person who collects and removes trash from homes and businesses

refers specifically to a male worker rather than any person
trashman
vsgarbage man
  • US
1 3.3

A person who collects trash and looks for things to use again or sell

focuses only on the male worker whose task is collection and disposal
refuse collector
vsgarbage man
  • UK
1 3.1

A person who collects and takes away rubbish from homes and businesses

is a more informal, gendered everyday term for the job
dustman
vsgarbage man
  • UK
1 6.1

A person who collects and takes away household rubbish

is the neutral male job term used more widely
binman
vsgarbage man
  • UK
1 4.9

A person who collects rubbish from bins outside homes

is the male job term not tied to a specific region
garbage woman
vsgarbage man
  • US
1 2.8

A woman who collects and takes away trash from homes and streets

is the male form of that everyday job title
garbo
vsgarbage man
  • Australian
1 9.5

A person who collects rubbish from outside people's houses

is a standard phrase rather than slang
garbage hauler
vsgarbage man
  • US
1 3.0

A person or company that collects and takes away trash

refers only to an individual male worker, not organizations
garbagewoman
vsgarbage man
  • US
6.0

A woman who collects trash from homes and shops

is the male-specific version rather than a female worker
garbage carter
vsgarbage man
  • US
4.9

A person who collects and takes away rubbish from homes

is the common modern male job expression

Surface Forms

garbage man singular
garbage men plural

Morphology

garbage + man

The meaning 'a man whose job is to collect and dispose of garbage' is directly and transparently derivable from combining 'garbage' (waste) with 'man' (person), following a common English noun+noun occupational compounding pattern. This compositional logic is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.

Etymology

The compound noun garbage man comes from a simple picture: the garbage, meaning trash, and the man who takes it away. That's why it means 'a man whose job is to collect and dispose of garbage'.