junk

Meaning

Noun

1. Discarded or waste material; rubbish, trash, garbage.
2. A collection of miscellaneous items of little value.
3. (slang) Any narcotic drug, especially heroin.
4. (slang) The genitalia, especially of a male.
5. Salt beef.
6. Pieces of old cable or cordage, used for making gaskets, mats, swabs, etc., and when picked to pieces, forming oakum for filling the seams of ships.
7. A fragment of any solid substance; a thick piece; a chunk.
8. Material or resources of a kind lacking commercial value.
9. Nonsense; gibberish.

Verb

1. (informal) To throw away.
2. (informal) To find something for very little money (meaning derived from the term junkshop)

Synonyms

rubbish

trash

scrap

garbage

🗑️

refuse

mess

waste

litter

stuff

odds and ends

discard

detritus

debris

lumber

crap

dust

trifles

vessel

bric-a-brac

rubble

small objects

ditch

dreck

thrash

boat

⛵

pollutants

puncture

put away

retire

sailboat

⛵

sheet metal

ship

🚢

shit

💩

smash up

sweepings

tat

throw away

throw out

toss

total

totaled

trifling

waste material

wreck

old things

scotch

small things

toss away

cheap merchandise

broken piece

ramshackle furniture

shlock

bonding jumper

worthless object

waste and old materials

garbage

🗑️

argosy

trash

ballast

bang up

barricade

cashier

cast aside

cast off

chuck

chunk

crash

debunk

deep-six

dispose

dud

filth

fling

fragments

jettison

junker

merchandise

nonsense

obstacle

offal

pell-mell

petty

Pronounced as (IPA)

/d͡ʒʌŋk/

Etymology

From earlier meaning "old refuse from boats and ships", from Middle English junk, jounke, jonk, joynk (“an old cable or rope”, nautical term), sometimes cut into bits and used as caulking; of uncertain origin; perhaps related to join, joint, juncture. Often compared to Middle English junk, jonk, jonke, junck (“a rush; basket made of rushes”), from Old French jonc, from Latin iuncus (“rush, reed”); however, the Oxford English Dictionary finds "no evidence of connexion".