Word.ws English Dictionary

hot garbage

hot garbage noun: nuclear waste.

Noun

hot garbage (uncountable)

  1. Nuclear waste.
    • The water is first filtered and processed to eliminate as much as possible substances that might become radioactive. After going through the reactor, it is held in basins until the radioactivity of the remaining impurities dies down and then is released. The water is still carrying some "hot...1955 April, Rafe Gibbs, Popular Mechanics, volume 103, number 4, Hearst Magazines, page 250
  2. (derogatory, idiomatic, slang) Anything that is extremely bad, low-quality, or worthless.
    • It wasn't a big deal for some people who were lucky enough to have regular-smelling feet, but Rusty had been born with foot-odor complications, which caused certain people to gag when he entered the room, or to ask him why his feet smelled like hot garbage.2013, Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist, Random House, →ISBN, page 109

Origin of hot garbage

From hot (“radioactive”) + garbage (“waste”). Originally a term for radioactive materials, it evolved as a descriptor for anything highly undesirable.

Questions about hot garbage

What does hot garbage mean?
Hot garbage means nuclear waste.
What part of speech is hot garbage?
Hot garbage is a noun.

Words near hot garbage in the dictionary

  1. hot folder
  2. hot folders
  3. hot from the press
  4. hot fudge
  5. hot fusion
  6. hot garbage
  7. Hot Gates
  8. hot genocide
  9. hot genocides
  10. hot girl summer
  11. hot girl summers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hot garbage (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.

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