garbageman

American  

[gahr-bij-man] / ˈgɑr bɪdʒˌmæn /

noun

• garbagemen
  plural

1. a person employed to collect, haul away, and dispose of garbage; sanitation worker.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• garbagemen
  plural

Etymology

Origin of garbageman

An Americanism dating back to 1885–90; garbage + man

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

garbageman garbagemen

“The garbageman is the Sisyphus” of our wasteful society, where the “dream of disposability has turned into a nightmare.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

Not only does he star as a garbageman who goes by the moniker Clean, but he also produced the film, composed the score and contributed original music.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2022

“It’s the Wild West out here,” said the activist, Sean T. Campbell, a career garbageman and Teamsters union president.

From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2020

I telephoned Sayyid, a friend who was the neighborhood garbageman, because he had been at the apartment.

From The New Yorker ● Mar. 25, 2019

I talked with Judy at breakfast, and she told me how she had wanted to be a garbageman when she was a kid.

From "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers

You won’t find too many garbagemen who age well.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

“I kind of think about them as the little garbagemen of the forest,” Marek said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2023

In the course of his investigation, the commissario interviews one of the garbagemen, or spazzini, from whom he gleans a damning piece of evidence.

From New York Times ● Mar. 24, 2021

She wondered whether garbagemen went around telling people that everything was waste, which would’ve been, to her mind, closer to the truth than anything else she’d heard.

From The New Yorker ● May 13, 2019

Where else do cabbies and garbagemen, bankers and businessmen all walk with a beat?

From "Bronx Masquerade" by Nikki Grimes