Word.ws English Dictionary

garbo

garbo noun: a rubbish collector; a garbage man.

Noun

garbo (countable and uncountable, plural garbos)

  1. (Australia, countable, informal) A rubbish collector; a garbage man.
    • Then believe it or not, I worked for some time as a garbo, collecting the rubbish in the wee hours of the morning.1986, Emily George, Merri Lee: A Feminist Fantasy, page 124
    • The referendum papers, accompanied by a strong statement of Council′s position, was to be letterboxed by the Council′s “garbos” (rubbish collectors) and inspectors on a Thursday and collected by volunteers over the weekend.1998, Hall Greenland, Red Hot: The Life & Times of Nick Origlass, 1908-1996, page 253
  2. (Australia, Canada, US, colloquial, derogatory, uncountable) Garbage; something considered worthless.
    • "Any quartz in the Mountain?" / "Just garbo quartz, not enough to produce any electrical fields." / "No disruption in the magnetic field?" / "No, sir."2012, Mickael Taddeo, Gabriel's Mountain, FriesenPress, →ISBN, page 229
    • Then they beat me and burned me and locked me up, before handing me back like a piece of garbo, when I acted up or they got tired of me.2016, Clare Revell, Violets in February, Pelican Book Group, →ISBN

Adjective

garbo (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial) Useless or worthless.
    • This film is garbo; they didn't hire any writers!

Examples of garbo in a sentence

  • As far as Jasper was concerned, his mum being a garbo was pretty cool.2010, Zana Fraillon, Monstrum House: Locked In, unnumbered page:
  • The priest would bring salvation while the garbo took the rubbish.2010, Adam Shand, The Skull: Informers, Hit Men and Australia′s Toughest Cop, page 350:
  • It sucks so much that JKR is a transphobic piece of garbo. ...2022 March 19, Dan Clarendon, “'Hogwarts Legacy' Will Reportedly Welcome Transgender Characters — You Hear That, J.K.?”, in Distractify...
  • Then Noelle told me she's a Paralympian and I was like, "Well, my lie was just garbo.2022 December 7, Mike Bloom, quoting Sami Layadi, “'Survivor 43's' Sami Layadi Explains Why He Never Went After Cody and Jesse”, in Parade...

Synonyms of garbo

Forms of garbo

pluralgarbos

Origin of garbo

Clipping of garbage + -o (colloquialising suffix).

Questions about garbo

What does garbo mean?
Garbo means a rubbish collector; a garbage man.
How do you use garbo in a sentence?
As far as Jasper was concerned, his mum being a garbo was pretty cool.
What part of speech is garbo?
Garbo can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of garbo?
The plural of garbo is garbos.

Words near garbo in the dictionary

  1. garbley
  2. garbley gook
  3. garbling
  4. garblings
  5. garbly
  6. garbo
  7. garboard
  8. garboard strake
  9. garboard strakes
  10. garboards
  11. Garboesque

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: garbo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 garbo.ogg.

Cite this entry: “garbo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/garbo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.