wastepaper basket
Britishnoun
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.
The accusation, based on a comparison of handwriting on a document found in the German's wastepaper basket in Paris, kicked off what would become known as the "Dreyfus affair".
From Barron's • Nov. 18, 2025
New visitors found the sculpture—inspired by an Indian stepwell and sometimes likened to a wastepaper basket or a shawarma—encased in metal mesh, as if to keep out pigeons.
From Slate • Jul. 30, 2025
Tossing a bottle of Vichy water into a wastepaper basket, he walks off into the night with Rick to join the anti-Vichy French forces of Gen. Charles de Gaulle.
From Washington Post • Nov. 17, 2021
Yet 15,000 words of her new book were torn up in the wastepaper basket, a “literary miscarriage”.
From The Guardian • Feb. 23, 2018
She spends her days lying down, a pink plastic wastepaper basket by her side, the shades drawn, her mouth and teeth coated with the taste of metal.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
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.
