different between rubbish vs cobweb

English

Etymology

From Middle English r?b?us (“rubbish, building rubble”), further origin uncertain; possibly from Anglo-Norman rubous, rubouse, rubbouse (“refuse, waste material; building rubble”), and compare Late Latin rebbussa, robousa, robusium, robusum, rubisum, rubusa, rubusium (although the Anglo-Norman and Latin words may be derived from the English word instead of the other way around). The English word may be related to rubble, though the connection is unclear.

The verb is derived from the noun.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /???b??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /???b??/, /???-/
• Hyphenation: rub?bish

Noun

rubbish (usually uncountable, plural rubbishes)

1. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand, Britain) Refuse, waste, garbage, junk, trash.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:trash
2. (by extension, chiefly Australia, New Zealand, Britain) An item, or items, of low quality.
3. (by extension, chiefly Australia, New Zealand, Britain) Nonsense.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:nonsense
4. (archaic) Debris or ruins of buildings.

Alternative forms

• rubbage (now dialectal)

Derived terms

Related terms

• rubble (possibly)

Translations

Adjective

rubbish (comparative more rubbish, superlative most rubbish)

1. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand, Britain, colloquial) Exceedingly bad; awful.

   Synonyms: abysmal, crappy, horrendous, shitty, terrible; see also Thesaurus:bad, Thesaurus:low-quality

Translations

Interjection

rubbish (chiefly Australia, Britain, New Zealand, colloquial)

1. Used to express that something is exceedingly bad, awful, or terrible.

2. Used to express that what was recently said is nonsense or untrue; balderdash!, nonsense!

   Synonyms: bollocks, bullshit

Translations

Verb

rubbish (third-person singular simple present rubbishes, present participle rubbishing, simple past and past participle rubbished)

1. (transitive, chiefly Australia, Britain, New Zealand, colloquial) To criticize, to denigrate, to denounce, to disparage. [from c. 1950s (Australia, New Zealand)]

Derived terms

• rubbisher

Translations

References

Further reading

• waste on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “rubbish”, in Online Etymology Dictionary

English

Etymology

From Middle English copweb, coppeweb, equivalent to cop (“spider”) +? web. Compare Middle Dutch kopwebbe, German Low German Kobbenwebbe (Westphalian).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?bw?b/
• Hyphenation: cob?web

Noun

cobweb (plural cobwebs)

1. A spiderweb, or the remains of one, especially an asymmetrical one that is woven with an irregular pattern of threads.
   • 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter X. "Provincetown", page 200.

     […] there was stretched across his gateway a circular cobweb of the largest kind and quite entire. This looked so ominous that I actually turned aside and went in the back way.
2. One of its filaments; gossamer.
3. (figuratively) Something thin and unsubstantial, or flimsy and worthless; valueless remainder.
   • c. 1579, Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy

     The dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age.
4. An intricate plot to catch the unwary.

   • Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools.

5. (Internet slang, rare) A web page that either has not been updated for a long time, or that is rarely visited.
6. The European spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa striata.
7. (informal, usually in the plural) fuzzy inexact memories.
   • 2008 Burlan Eugene Ellison The Ebony Coffin: A Jim Kirkwood Novel page 98

     I washed my face, trying to get the cobwebs of hard sex and an alcohol-induced sleep out of my head

   • 2012 Stanley M. Bierman Napoleon's Penis: Plus Other Engaging and Outrageous Tales page 16

     Veyz mir, meaning something like “Oh . . . my!,” was a Yiddish expression that I had not employed for a long, long time. Yet in the cobwebs of my memory, that expression was still lurking inside. How interesting!

Hypernyms

• web

Derived terms

Translations