Word.ws English Dictionary

trashing

trashing is the present participle and gerund of trash.

Noun

trashing (countable and uncountable, plural trashings)

  1. The act by which something is trashed.
    • One of the most recent trashings of my work was by Sara Suleri in an issue of Critical Inquiry.1995, Gary A. Olson, Elizabeth Hirsh, Women Writing Culture, page 136
    • As news about the cinema trashings spread, they aroused widespread protest […]2001, Kathleen M. Blee, France Winddance Twine, Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice, page 238
  2. (US) Dumpster diving.
  3. (Oxford University) A tradition of throwing food, confetti, etc. over students after their final examinations.

Meaning of trash

Verb

trash (third-person singular simple present trashes, present participle trashing, simple past and past participle trashed)

  1. (US) To discard.
    • Fatcat also fails to warn you that unformatting will trash any files copied to the unintentionally formatted disk.1989 December 18, InfoWorld, page 66
  2. (US) To make into a mess.
    • The burglars trashed the house.
  3. (US) To beat soundly in a game.
  4. (transitive) To treat as trash, or worthless matter; hence, to spurn, humiliate, or disrespect.
    • 20 May 2018, Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, Is Meghan Markle the American the royals have needed all along?
      It is a British tradition for the media to celebrate an upcoming royal wedding by trashing the incoming in-laws, from Diana’s stepmother, Raine Spencer, to Kate Middleton’s Uncle Gary and...
  5. To free from trash, or worthless matter; hence, to lop; to crop.
    • to trash the rattoons of sugar cane
    Synonyms:
    detrash
  6. To hold back by a trash or leash, as a dog in pursuing game; hence, to retard, encumber, or restrain; to clog; to hinder vexatiously.
    • I fled too; But not so fast , —your jewel had been lost then, Young Hengo there; he trashed ' mec. 1613 (first performance), John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Bonduca”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, (please...

See all 16 meanings of trash

Forms of trashing

pluraltrashings

Phrases with trashing

Questions about trashing

What does trashing mean?
Trashing means the act by which something is trashed.
What is trashing the present participle and gerund of?
Trashing is the present participle and gerund of trash.
What part of speech is trashing?
Trashing is a noun.
What is the plural of trashing?
The plural of trashing is trashings.

Words near trashing in the dictionary

  1. trashifying
  2. Trashigang
  3. trashily
  4. trashiness
  5. trashinesses
  6. trashing
  7. trashing out
  8. trashings
  9. trashion
  10. Trashiyangtse
  11. trashland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trashing (page history and authors); trash (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:

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