junk
1 Americannoun
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any old or discarded material, as metal, paper, or rags.
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anything that is regarded as worthless, meaningless, or contemptible; trash.
-
old cable or cordage used when untwisted for making gaskets, swabs, oakum, etc.
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Nautical Slang. salt junk.
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Baseball Slang. relatively slow, unorthodox pitches that are deceptive to the batter in movement or pace, as knuckleballs or forkballs.
verb (used with object)
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junks,
present (3rd person singular)
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junked,
past participle, past
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junking
present participle
adjective
noun
noun
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narcotics, especially heroin.
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the external genitals.
I kicked him in the junk.
noun
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discarded or secondhand objects, etc, collectively
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informal
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rubbish generally
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nonsense
the play was absolute junk
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slang any narcotic drug, esp heroin
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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junksimple
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junkssimple
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have junkedperfect
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has junkedperfect
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am junkingprogressive
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are junkingprogressive
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is junkingprogressive
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have been junkingperfect progressive
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has been junkingperfect progressive
Past
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junkedsimple
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had junkedperfect
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was junkingprogressive
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were junkingprogressive
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had been junkingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of junk1
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English jonk, junk “(in sailing) old rope or cable”; further origin uncertain
Origin of junk2
First recorded in 1545–55; from Portuguese junco, from Malay jong “large boat, ship,” possibly from dialectal Chinese (Xiamen) chûn; compare Guangdong (Cantonese) dialect syùhn, (Mandarin) Chinese chuán
Origin of junk3
First recorded in 1920–25; perhaps special use of junk 1
Explanation
Junk is trash, debris, or garbage — it's something that's left behind or thrown away because it's not wanted. You might view the broken toaster as junk, while your sister sees it as an interesting repair project. After an accident, your car might be junk, and if it's hauled off to a scrapyard, you can say you had to junk it, using the verb meaning "to throw it away." One person's junk, however, is another person's valuable metal that can be sold to recycling companies. A completely different, non-trashy kind of junk is a Chinese sailing ship. These uses are connected through the nautical origin of junk, originally spelled junke and meaning "old rope or cable."
Vocabulary lists containing junk
Chinese History - Introductory
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Chinese History - Middle School and High School
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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.
See Examples For:
In 2011 Dobbie brought a judicial review at the Court of Session in Edinburgh against a plan to ban junk food to combat inmate obesity at Carstairs.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
Indeed, it’s difficult to estimate how space junk is currently orbiting our planet.
From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2026
Some experts have warned that amassing too much space junk around Earth could lead to a dangerous chain reaction of collisions known as the "Kessler syndrome."
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
But today, with our easy access to cheap, calorie-dense junk food and sedentary routines, those same adaptations that once helped us to survive can cause us a few issues.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
The junk pile beside the barn started moving, and Roz appeared.
From "The Wild Robot Escapes" by Peter Brown
Atop chairs, tables, and an overstuffed sofa, black-and-white prints of junks on the Yangtze River competed for space with cancelled passports and half-century-old issues of Vogue and Collier’s.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 11, 2017
Thousands more South Vietnamese took to sea in a motley group of boats, junks, rafts and sampans.
From US News ● Apr. 30, 2015
He junks that 71-line poem, deeming it a “work of the second intensity,” which is apparently some sort of Modernist insult that we should immediately bring back into common use.
From Slate ● Dec. 5, 2014
The Selden map is a reminder that Chinese traders sailing in junks navigated in Asian waters centuries before the Europeans came.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 31, 2013
Tied up along its shores was every conceivable kind of watercraft— Chinese junks, tugboats, rickety houseboats, old schooners, and barges heaped with jumbles of industrial cargo.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
The city’s common-law heritage—which nominally rejected retroactivity in criminal law—was junked.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 22, 2025
Prospects of a pre-negotiation ceasefire seem to have been junked.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2025
“This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. told the Washington Post.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2025
Piled on sidewalks, junked up against street curbs, and leaned against light poles, these unwieldy obstacles are a hazard for innocent citizens just trying to walk down the street.
From Washington Times ● Nov. 20, 2023
To house construction workers while the road was going in, Yutan purchased three junked buses, outfitted each with bunks and a simple barrel stove, and skidded them into the wilderness behind a D-9 Caterpillar.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
On Bluesky, Bill & Ted star Alex Winter shared that he was junking his Threads account, prompting fans to share screenshots of their own deletions.
From Slate ● Jan. 8, 2025
Second, having what Sunak calls an honest debate about the "consensus" means junking some government promises.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2023
Merlino said she was stunned the commissioners voted for junking the machines and returning to old-fashioned hand counts.
From Reuters ● Nov. 6, 2022
It should continue to work on the Communities feature so people can chat about things they’re interested in rather than junking up their followers’ timelines with stuff they won’t care about.
From The Verge ● Apr. 25, 2022
She was taking the entire Garland value system and junking it!
From "Schooled" by Gordon Korman
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.
