English

Noun

trashery ‎(plural trasheries)

1. A collection of garbage, of things that resemble rubbish, or of things, persons, ideas, etc that are considered to be of no significant value.
   • 1813, Sir Walter Scott, The Bridal of Triermain, (Google search result at gutenberg.org):

     Who comes in foreign trashery

     Of tinkling chain and spur,

     A walking haberdashery

     Of feathers, lace, and fur.

   • 1859, John W. Burgon, The Portrait of a Christian Gentleman: A Memoir of Patrick Fraser Tytler, p. 92 (Google preview):

     I took four sketches of the different head-dresses, all equally detestable, which I shall finish and bring to shew you how far superior the natural beauty of our own girls in their simple dresses is to the trashery of the French belles.

   • 1969 June, Robert A. Flammang, "Communications," Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 217-18:

     But it is not altogether funny to visualize our libraries becoming trasheries, our Centers of Learning objects of public ridicule and our occupations irrelevant to the world that is coming to be.

   • 1972 Jan. 3, Judith Crist, "Movies," New York Magazine, p. 47 (Google preview):

     So our list of the Ten Worst is carefully culled from the trashery of Doctors' Wives or The Seven Minutes or Percy and The Statue . . . .

   • 2000, Ed Sanders, America: A History in Verse, Volume 1, ISBN 9781574231175, p. 175 (Google preview):

     . . . this tasteless rightwing trashery . . . .

Usage notes

• Sometimes used as a play on words on the term treasury, as in the following statement concerning the American poet, Ogden Nash (1902-1971):

2013, Charles E. Moore, Listen, My Children: The Maclay Sixth Grade Collegiate Poetry Course, ISBN 9781466975255, p. 58 (Google preview):

One of his collections of poems, such collections sometimes being called “Treasuries,” was renamed by some witty critic “The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery”.

Derived terms

• white trashery / white-trashery

References

• trashery at OneLook Dictionary Search