"Dumpster fire" is an informal term in the United States used to describe a catastrophically bad situation. It has appeared in metaphorical form as early as 2003, and picked up traction in 2010 in the world of sports. The term was heavily used in 2016 to describe the United States presidential election that year.
Dumpster fire derives from fires that start in large trash bins. These bins are often termed "dumpsters" after the Dempster Dumpster brand of trash bin in the United States, which eventually came to be colloquialized as "dumpster". [1]
The earliest known use of the term dates back to a 2003 review of a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in which The Arizona Republic 's Bill Muller said that the film was "the cinematic equivalent of a dumpster fire – stinky but insignificant". [1] Urban Dictionary added a definition for the term as early as 2008, with one entry listing it as "a laughably poor performance." [1] Usage of "dumpster fire" remained relatively obscure throughout the early 2010s, but gained widespread usage starting in 2010 in the world of American sports, where teams that performed exceptionally poorly would be labelled with the term in news, social media, and talk radio. [1] [2]
In late 2015 the term shifted towards the realm of politics, and particularly the 2016 United States presidential election. [2] The Daily Beast suggested that it was linked to Republican Party candidate Donald Trump, with Google searches for the word spiking when he announced his presidential run in October 2015. [3] That year, dumpster fire—as well as the two emoji that represent the individual words, "🗑️🔥"—was announced to be the American Dialect Society's word of the year, beating out "woke" in a run-off election. [4] The president of the vote, sociolinguist Ben Zimmer, reasoned that people used the word to describe the unpleasant year in a "colorful, evocative" way, adding that it was a term suited for "pessimistic times". [5]
In March 2018, dumpster fire was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, defined as "an utterly calamitous or mismanaged situation or occurrence". [2]
Claire Fallon with HuffPost comments that the term might derive part of its goofiness from the consonants in "dumpster", arguing that the three plosive consonants in just two syllables might be naturally funny in a similar manner to the made-up words of Dr. Seuss. Fallon also comments that the phrase is both "too grandiose and too unserious for common parlance", pointing out that one would refer to neither the Middle East nor a colleague as a dumpster fire, but for different reasons. [1]
After the word was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, National Public Radio commented that the word was more of the "I know it when I see it" variety, but said that the metaphor was also a "phrase for our time" they "wouldn't want to live without". [6] CNN also commented that the term showed relevance to the present day, highlighting the Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal, explosive cyclogenesis, and the 2018 NFL Draft. [7]
Several journalists who responded to the questions in Erin Gloria Ryan's oral history of the term in The Daily Beast expected or hoped that the term would go out of fashion, arguing that it was overused during the election cycle. [3]
Dumpster diving is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners but deemed useful to the picker. It is not confined to dumpsters and skips specifically and may cover standard household waste containers, curb sides, landfills or small dumps.
The word dord is a dictionary error in lexicography. It was accidentally created, as a ghost word, by the staff of G. and C. Merriam Company in the New International Dictionary, second edition (1934). That dictionary defined the term as a synonym for density used in physics and chemistry in the following way:
dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density.
Aussie is Australian slang for Australian, both the adjective and the noun, and commonly, Aus is for Australia.
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated is an American company that publishes reference books and is mostly known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States.
The American Dialect Society (ADS), founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal American Speech.
An eggcorn is the alteration of a phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements, creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context. The autological word "eggcorn" is itself an eggcorn, derived from acorn. Eggcorns often arise as people attempt to make sense of a stock phrase that uses a term unfamiliar to them, as for example replacing "Alzheimer's disease" with "old-timers' disease", or William Shakespeare's "to the manner born" with "to the manor born".
The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY", refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year.
A spit-take is a comedic technique or reaction in which someone spits a drink, or sometimes food, out of their mouth as a reaction to a surprising or funny statement.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British/Commonwealth English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.
In phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that commonly stand in a stressed closed syllable, while free vowels are those that can stand in either a stressed closed syllable or a stressed open syllable.
Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.
A waste container, also known as a dustbin, rubbish bin, trash can, and garbage can, among other names, is a type of container intended to store waste that is usually made out of metal or plastic. The words "rubbish", "basket" and "bin" are more common in British English usage; "trash" and "can" are more common in American English usage. "Garbage" may refer to food waste specifically or to municipal solid waste in general.
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary or OSPD is a dictionary developed for use in the game Scrabble, by speakers of American and Canadian English.
Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year are words of the year lists published annually by the American dictionary-publishing company Merriam-Webster, Inc. The lists feature ten words from the English language. These word lists started in 2003 and have been published at the end of each year.
A facepalm is the physical gesture of placing one's hand across one's face, lowering one's face into one's hand or hands or covering or closing one's eyes. The gesture is often exaggerated by giving the motion more force and making a slapping noise when the hand comes in contact with the face. The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, exasperation, embarrassment, horror, shock, surprise, exhaustion, sarcasm, shame, or incredulous disbelief.
Grawlix or obscenicon is the use of typographical symbol to replace profanity. Mainly used in cartoons and comics, it is used to get around language restrictions or censorship in publishing. At signs (@), dollar signs ($), number signs (#), ampersands (&), percent signs (%), and asterisks (*) are oft-used symbols. The characters may resemble the letters they replace, such as "$" standing in for "S".
B, or b, is the second letter of the Latin-script alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is bee, plural bees. It represents the voiced bilabial stop in many languages, including English. In some other languages, it is used to represent other bilabial consonants.
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
"Alternative facts" was a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway during a Meet the Press interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the attendance numbers of Donald Trump's inauguration as President of the United States. When pressed during the interview with Chuck Todd to explain why Spicer would "utter a provable falsehood", Conway stated that Spicer was giving "alternative facts". Todd responded, "Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."
The dictionary definition of dumpster fire at Wiktionary
Media related to Dumpster fires at Wikimedia Commons