dunghill
Americannoun
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a heap of dung
-
a foul place, condition, or person
Etymology
Origin of dunghill
Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325; see origin at dung, hill
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He once described himself to one of his children as “a machine condemned to devour books and then throw them, in a changed form, on the dunghill of history.”
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 3, 2016
Jefferson said the work was like extracting diamonds from a dunghill.
From Salon ● May 31, 2012
The year of Reinhardt's arrival in Berlin was a period of intense realism in the Teutonic theatre, when every dunghill and sweat bead in the dialogue found its concrete embodiment on the stage.
From Time Magazine Archive
O Earth, take charge of this maggot of the dunghill who, for a brief space, inhabited our sphere of life.
From Time Magazine Archive
The very flower that we stoop to smell Grows from a dunghill, look but in its roots, And what obscene and hideous blind life Goes teeming; sickened then we shrink aback From rose's velvet petals.
From The Deluge and Other Poems by Presland, John
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
