rubbish heap
1
2.7
- noun
- /ˈrʌbɪʃ hiːp/
- UK
:
montón de basura
- The children found their old toys buried in the rubbish heap behind the garden shed.
Examples
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A stray dog rummaged through the rubbish heap, searching for food.
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He decided to clean up the rubbish heap and recycle what he could salvage.
-
Oh, I might hang around the rubbish heap for a bit.
-
Sometimes it seems like a rubbish heap.
Fiction book (1993) -
And now I'm on the rubbish heap.
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Doesn't sound like an ordinary rubbish heap!
-
They will be thrown onto the rubbish heap of history.
Blog text (22) -
An old man in gray, with a hopeful look on his face, was bending to dig through a rubbish heap.
Fiction book (1992) -
Every time I see that rubbish heap, I think of it as a heap of discarded reality.
Fiction book (1992) -
As Gutierrez noted, the world's poor have been exiled to its rubbish heaps.
Academic text (2010)
Synonyms
426
1.9
A heap of things put together
53
1.1
A pile of things put on top of each other in no order
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
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
5.4
A pile of old broken metal and other things kept to be thrown away
A pile of rubbish left outside in one place
A pile of dust and old rubbish thrown away
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a pile of waste' is directly and compositionally derived from 'rubbish' (waste) + 'heap' (pile), so a learner who knows both words can infer the MWE. This is a common, literal nominal compounding pattern found across languages, making it immediately comprehensible to B1 learners.
Etymology
Rubbish heap comes from the simple image of people throwing rubbish onto a heap in one place. That's why it means 'a pile of waste'.