This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2110, Trashy English Vocabulary.
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A listener asked us, what is the difference between trash and garbage in English?
Today.
Get all of the details plus get fun ways to use these words figuratively at a higher level of English fluency.
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Hey there, Michelle.
How are you feeling today?
I'm good.
Lindsay, how are you?
Oh my gosh.
I'm so excited to be on the microphone.
I just came off one of our amazing monthly fluency parties for all students in our courses.
It was so fun to meet some of our students.
So I'm feeling that energy of the party.
Oh, that's great.
That's great.
Yeah.
I, uh, I hope, I hope it was fun.
I'm sure it was a great time.
Yeah.
Um yeah, yesterday I was at the park with my kids and there was, I tried to give them freeze-dried strawberries.
Okay, interesting.
And let's just say those are messier than I could have ever imagined.
Like there was...
I mean, strawberry all over my baby's face, like all over.
It looked like she had eaten like Cheetos you know Cheetos but it was red and it was all around her mouth.
She looked like a horror movie.
So then I was wiping everything off and there was just so much trash that I needed to throw out, because I had wipes and I had other snacks and it was gross.
So I had all this trash.
Yeah, at the playground, but I made sure I cleaned it up.
Oh, wow.
I feel like every day is an adventure when you have kids, isn't it?
I think our listeners are going to resonate with you here.
Just a total adventure.
I wish I could.
I should send you more pictures in the moment, Lindsay.
You really should.
No, I sent you a chocolate on my pants.
Oh, yeah.
Remember?
It's just, you just, you make it, you're making it work, Michelle.
You're just making it work.
I'm making it work.
So there was a lot of trash.
So, but today we are actually talking about trash.
Trash.
I know when we signed on today, I said, Michelle, what's the topic of this episode?
You said trash.
I said, okay, interesting.
Kind of a little funny, right?
All right.
Okay.
All right.
Let's get into it.
But yeah, so we're going to get into it.
But before we do that, we want to talk about something exciting that's been going on recently on our podcast Lindsay, and that is our Spotify polls.
Yes.
So yeah.
Lindsay, did you know that 20% of our listeners have been on a helicopter ride?
Is that so, Michelle?
That is surprising to me.
I love it.
Right?
That is surprising.
We're learning so much about our listeners every time we post a new poll.
And what did we talk about, by the way, in that episode, 2082?
Yeah, we were talking about the expression, is that so?
Or like, is that so?
When you're kind of surprised about something.
And it's funny since, now that we're talking about this, I realized even in the past couple days that that i was using oh, is that so?
So it really is.
So you listened to our podcast and learned from our little lesson there on that one and took it into the real world in that case.
Yes, exactly so.
Yeah, we asked you guys on this poll have you ever been on a helicopter ride?
So eighty percent of you have not, but twenty percent of you have.
Kind of surprising, I know.
I did think that was – yeah, that's kind of a high number.
Lindsay, have you been on a helicopter?
I have not, Michelle.
I've never been on a helicopter ride.
Would you?
I would.
Of course I would.
I think I said in that episode I'd go over the Grand Canyon.
Oh, right.
Yeah, of course I would if I could.
We were talking about what we would like to see from the helicopter.
That's right.
Yes.
So, guys, look on out because we have polls really on every –
Yes, actually.
Yes.
And we announced some very important ones.
But guys, there are polls every day for every episode.
So go and participate, you know, make your voice heard.
We want to understand you all are listeners, right?
So vote in the polls.
Love it.
Great.
And we also wanted to take this time to thank our reviewers, right, Lindsay?
Yeah, I'm going to call out some amazing listeners who have reviewed our show.
Thank you to Shireen Zangia-Badi from the US, Ling Long, who left us, by the way Michelle, an amazing five-star review.
Thank you.
It's so heartwarming.
You should go read it.
It's incredible.
Thank you, Ling Long.
Yeah, alofazi faizi from the us and english shiva from the us, and english shiva asked us a great question.
You can also do that, guys.
You can ask us a specific question.
If it's a good one, we will feature that question in an episode so you can actually ask your question right in that review, along with telling us what you think about the show.
And thank you to mayran from iran.
Guys, leave us a review for allers english If you haven't yet.
We read these every week and we pay attention to them.
It matters how you feel about All Ears English, so let us know.
That's right.
Thank you so much, guys.
Today's question comes to us from Spotify, actually.
Love it.
You can also ask questions in Spotify.
Spotify now has a lot of interesting ways to participate, to interact with us.
Michelle, I'm going to go ahead and read the question.
It is from Renee Santana.
He or she said I'd like to know the difference between sky and heaven and garbage and trash from the Dominican Republic.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Great questions.
We're going to do the trash question today.
Love it.
How trashy.
Yes.
How trashy.
So before we go into that, guys, we're going to really jump into this now and get into the trash.
Listen to episode 2093 of All Ears English.
Was her and I or her and me?
Your grammar questions answered?
Grammar.
Yeah.
We've been getting into a lot of grammar this fall on All Ears English to make sure you guys really understand fundamentals right, the grammar that is kind of that missing piece, even at the highest level.
But today i'm excited to get into trash.
So okay, all right.
So where do we start?
Okay, so we're gonna focus on garbage and trash.
Um the difference.
So i looked it up in the dictionary um, so it said trash is discarded matter or refuse and garbage is wasted or spoiled food and other refuse, as from a kitchen or household.
Okay.
So that I thought was interesting, because I've.
I mean, if I were to just ask you the question now, I shouldn't have told you the dictionary.
You shouldn't have told me.
Yeah.
But what would you?
What do you, I mean?
Can you think back on what you would have thought the difference was?
I really think I wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference.
Yeah.
I don't think there's a big enough difference to really matter for connection, which is our goal here at All.
Ears English.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Let's see if I'm wrong.
No, I mean, I agree with you.
I mean, I spent some time looking.
There's a website I looked at differenceguru, and it talks a lot about like You know things and how fast they decompose.
Oh, boy.
And, you know, I'm looking right here.
Trash, things that slowly decompose.
Garbage, things that rapidly decompose.
If it's wet or dry.
Oh, no.
Oh but, but.
But native speakers, they don't think about that.
When they go and say I'm going to take out the, what do you say?
I'm going to take out the trash.
Okay.
Take out the trash.
Maybe it's the T and the T it works.
Right.
I'm going to take out the trash.
It flows better.
But I don't think like oh, how fast does it decompose before I like?
Or is it food or is it not food?
Like it doesn't matter what's in the trash.
I call it the trash.
Yes.
Or the garbage, if you're me.
Oh, you say garbage?
Sure.
No.
So when it comes... So I am the trash person in my house, meaning I take out the trash.
That's my job, my duty.
And I hold on to that duty to support my household.
Yes.
Every Sunday night, I move the trash to the curb and I collect it a couple times a week.
And I usually say, take out the trash.
Sometimes I might say, take out the garbage.
But I feel like take out the trash has a little bit more of a ring to it.
But honestly, I think it's a little arbitrary, Michelle.
Yeah.
I don't think if anybody said, oh, take out the garbage, I'd be like, what are you talking about?
It's totally correct.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I just say trash more than garbage.
I know this sounds funny, but I feel I was thinking garbage almost sounds a little bit more formal to me.
Yeah.
You might hear it a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like you might hear it a little bit less.
You might just hear it.
Trash might be the more common term, but garbage, totally legit.
Yeah.
And then there's litter, right?
So what is litter, Lindsay?
That is different.
That's definitely different.
So that is when someone, I think it's used more maybe as a verb, to litter.
When there's garbage or trash that's in places that it shouldn't be.
I guess that would be how I would define that.
You say so yes yes, exactly.
I would say like litter, like it's so funny talking about this.
Litter is always trash or garbage, but trash and garbage is not always litter.
Litter right, because trash and garbage is usually in the trash can or the garbage can.
It's not always on the street, but when it is on the street, where it doesn't belong, it becomes litter exactly.
There you go.
Yeah, I'm excited to get into this, Michelle.
Maybe, after we go through this, we'll talk a little bit about.
Well, there's one thing I think we missed that I want to highlight, which is compost.
Tell us about compost.
I think we've talked about this before, but you're you know more about it than i do.
Yeah well, you know, when i was living in cambridge which is a very it's a liberal city, it's a forward-thinking city uh we, the city, delivered us little compost bins and that's for food trash, that's for banana peels or kale stocks, that you didn't eat, things like that, and i would always measure how healthy i was that week based on how much compost there was.
Since i moved to denver, we don't even have that.
We don't even have, we don't compost here.
So i think, more like forward-thinking cities do have composting programs.
Um actually, i thought denver would like i.
I would guess that denver would have it, so i would too.
I i was surprised when i moved here.
I figured denver would be on par with cambridge.
I think have one, but you have to pay for it, which tells you how committed i am.
Yeah,
So I need to look into that and should start that program up.
But do you compost in, in your city, in New York where you live?
I don't, I don't wear, I don't, I feel bad saying that, but I don't.
It's okay.
It's a journey, right?
I haven't heard much about it lately.
Maybe it's not happening as much anymore, but most people just will put food trash in the garbage which yeah, we do our best right.
Michelle, we do our best.
It's okay.
Yeah yes yes, yes.
What else um?
And well then there's recycling also which uh, it's a that's a whole other discussion, because i've talked to people who say, a friend of mine she used to work with like city, I don't know.
And she said that so many things just get in the wrong place.
And you know it's just.
Sometimes you wonder if it's even worth it, because there's so many directions you need to follow.
And if it's not exactly right, it might not even happen.
Yeah right, it is a little complicated sometimes what can be recycled and what can't, and i feel like people don't always fully understand it.
I don't know if i fully understand all the nuances of that.
We certainly recycle, but i'm sure that i make mistakes and i'm sure someone on the other end is, you know, gritting their teeth and thinking oh, this is not meant to be in recycling.
This person did it wrong.
But yeah again, we're just trying to take little steps towards being right more uh, supporting the environment.
Yeah yeah yeah, Exactly.
So let's talk about the other ways that these words can be used.
So overall, as you could probably imagine, these aren't nice things to say.
No.
So the first one is just, yeah, is just trash.
So this is like to call have you ever heard somebody called trash or something called trash?
Yeah, i would never use this to refer to a person.
I would.
I would stay away from that just out of respect for human beings.
You know you don't want to say this, but if you hear it you'll know what it means.
Yeah yeah, i think.
Yeah, that's so.
For example, um say, saying something something, someone's behavior you know that's trash.
What you're doing, your behavior is trash right like wow, his behavior was total trash yesterday.
Right right right, right.
So or like, let's say, even if you're just having a debate with something, with someone, for a little personality, if you could say like Oh, that's trash.
Like, that's not true.
Like, you know, you could do something like that.
But you got to be careful with this one, because it is not nice.
You do need to be careful with it.
Yeah, there are certain things around just human beings needing basic respect, right?
And the next one is trashy.
So I hear this even more than just trash.
What does it mean, Michelle, would you say?
It means not good.
It's usually like a negative behavior or maybe something somebody is wearing that's not very classy.
Don't they say like classy or trashy?
Yeah, for sure.
Not classy, right?
The opposite of classy is trashy.
So for example, did you see the photo on the magazine?
It was so trashy.
Well, that's a good example of a kind of a somewhat benign way to use trashy is by talking about the tabloids, the tabloid magazines, right.
It's always like oh, Britney Spears and da da da pictures of the stars and in their sunglasses and hats, pretty trashy right.
Right, right, right, right.
So you might hear that a lot.
And like Lindsay said, it's more benign.
I mean, you're talking about someone you don't know.
I mean, we still like to be nice, but you know.
Yeah, be careful.
These are things people talk about.
Yeah, and there are a lot of other ways it's used.
And just be careful what you say about people and who's around, that kind of thing.
But I think find the more benign ways.
And that's a good example.
And the next one, love it, is trash talk.
So what is trash talk, Lindsay?
You see this a lot in sports. right?
So the players on the other team will be making comments to the team, maybe to distract them or to bring them down.
For example, the players did a lot of trash talking to distract their opponents.
This is always funny when I'm a tennis player and in tennis, you don't do trash talk.
But when you bring someone that doesn't play tennis into tennis, sometimes you hear trash talk and it's just funny.
It's out of place, but it's hilarious.
Really?
That's interesting.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, I will know to avoid trash talk.
There's no trash talking, Dennis.
Not really.
No, no, no.
And then so let's just talk quickly about garbage.
So I got some help from the free dictionary.
But yeah, sometimes you can just say, like how I said, that's trash.
You can also say that's garbage.
And I feel like that might almost be more common.
Like if somebody says, for example, oh, you've never been there, you might say, oh, that's garbage.
You know, I was you know, I was there last week.
Yeah, I agree with you there, Michelle.
This is a real nuance, guys.
On All Ears English, you get the real, real nuances here of English.
I agree that when someone says something and if you want to say, if you want to negate that or say that's incorrect, that's garbage.
I was there last week.
More common than that's trash.
For some reason, it's a better chunk.
It works.
Yes yes yes, yes.
Or if something is just really awful or not nice, that tv show is garbage.
I don't think you should be watching it.
Yes 100, i love that okay.
So guys, clearly you can use the words trash and garbage to refer to other things in life beyond just the physical bag of of of food waste right yeah, we've shown you how let's do a role play.
All right, we're going to use as many contexts as we can.
So here we are, cleaning up after a party.
Oh, wow.
Look at this mess.
Wow.
We got to clean up this garbage.
Definitely.
There's also some trash over there in the corner.
Ew, there's a cockroach.
Okay, it's gone now.
Oh, good.
You really got to keep this place cleaner, Lindsay.
That's garbage, Michelle.
This is just because of the party.
Okay, okay.
Did you see Raquel's dress?
Yeah, it was super trashy.
Definitely.
Okay, I like this.
We showed our listeners a lot of ways to use these terms.
Where do we start?
All right.
So you said we I said we got to clean up this garbage.
So I could have said trash too.
That would have been fine.
I'm not analyzing in my head.
What's how what is it composed of?
I don't think that no, no, no, no, no.
Yeah.
Don't waste your time with that.
Yeah, no, native speakers don't do that.
So in this case, if you're just looking at a mess that you have to clean up after a party, it's trash or it's garbage
Totally fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So then what did you say?
And then I said, definitely.
There's also some trash over there in the corner.
Mm hmm.
And then when there's a cockroach situation, and then I'm scolding you and I say you got to keep this place cleaner, Lindsay.
And you say, that's garbage, Michelle.
This is just because of the party.
So I'm kind of accusing you of not keeping your place together, which is not nice of me.
And you're just you're you're firing back.
You're saying that's garbage.
This is just because of the party.
This is not how I usually live.
Yeah, it's just another comeback, kind of just another way you can kind of refute what someone is saying and stand up for yourself right, I'm gonna start using this.
I have I don't think about using this, but I will okay um, and then I you said, did you see Raquel's dress?
And I said yeah, it was super trashy, right?
So what does that mean in that case?
What am I saying?
It was, it was probably a little revealing yeah, a little too revealing, maybe not yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, you know yeah, and I'd say, just be a little bit careful with this.
You know around, you know um, you know body concepts and if someone overhears you, you just want to be, I guess, just basic respect.
You know what I mean um, but yeah, people definitely do use it in that context to critique how someone looks.
For sure yes, it's not a nice thing to do.
We're teaching all the night not nice things right right, for sure.
Oh man Michelle, where should we leave our listeners?
I like this episode because we've taken something that felt so mundane.
We've made it kind of interesting by showing our listeners how we take it into another level, figuratively speaking.
Right right, right.
So these words garbage and trash i mean, we talked about literal garbage and trash and we could have just ended it there, but we realized that there's so many more ways you can use these words, whether they are nice or not.
You, you know we, we hope you guys are all being nice, but there are, like lindsay said, find the benign ways to use them.
Um yes talk, you know.
Think that's the biggest takeaway.
Yeah, like i said, the tabloids are definitely trashy.
There's no arguing against that.
Yes, and other things, rather than directly about someone or how they look.
That's always a good way to have more connection in your life.
You know, we want connection, we want relationships um, so good stuff, michelle.
And i want to remind our listeners guys, if you love our style of connection, not perfection, review us, write a review wherever you listen.
Right, michelle?
That's right.
Please review our podcast wherever you listen.
And also remember, you can ask questions in Apple Podcasts.
You can ask questions on Spotify, Instagram.
So please send your questions.
Yeah, good stuff.
I'll talk to you soon, Michelle.
Have a good day.
Thanks, you too.
Bye, Lindsay.
Bye.
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