wastebasket

[ weyst-bas-kit, -bah-skit ]

/ ˈweɪstˌbæs kɪt, -ˌbɑ skɪt /

a standing basket for wastepaper, small items of trash, etc.

Also called wastepaper basket.

Origin of wastebasket

First recorded in 1855–60; waste + basket

It will end up shriveled up, dried up, dead; rolled up in dirty gauze and tossed into a wastebasket, quickly forgotten.

No One Ever Loses to Cancer |Dushka Zapata |October 8, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
Beard nodded, and without another word, Kenney flung the work into the wastebasket.

Doug Kenney: The Odd Comic Genius Behind ‘Animal House’ and National Lampoon |Robert Sam Anson |March 1, 2014 |DAILY BEAST
What did you do—go through his wastebasket and find his pay stub?

The Supreme Court's Cluelessness on Gender Bias |Leslie Bennetts |June 22, 2011 |DAILY BEAST
Well, ultimately, the screenplay is the only part of a movie that you can fit into a wastebasket.

The New Roger Ebert Takes Our Movie Quiz |Marlow Stern |January 19, 2011 |DAILY BEAST

Not because he tried to use company money to purchase, among other items, a $1,400 wastebasket, but because he got caught.

Bank of America Smackdown! |Charlie Gasparino |April 28, 2009 |DAILY BEAST
Let my brain go into the wastebasket for the sake of an hour or so of exhilaration?

The Million Dollar Mystery |Harold MacGrath
My advice is to throw this play in the wastebasket and write one about that man.

Bambi |Marjorie Benton Cooke
Chub often said, The first person to hit the wastebasket around here will be fired.

Joan of the Journal |Helen Diehl Olds
Anything like that I always take and I tear up and put in the wastebasket.

Warren Commission (7 of 26): Hearings Vol. VII (of 15) |The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy
Cannon left his fingerprints on it, dropped it into the wastebasket, and covered it with tissue paper.

Hail to the Chief |Gordon Randall Garrett

wastebasket

/ (ˈweɪstˌbɑːskɪt) /

an open receptacle for paper and other dry litter Also called (esp in Britain): wastepaper basket