Library / English Dictionary

JUNK

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of various Chinese boats with a high poop and lugsails

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("junk" is a kind of...):

boat (a small vessel for travel on water)

Meronyms (parts of "junk"):

lug; lugsail (a sail with four corners that is hoisted from a yard that is oblique to the mast)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up

Synonyms:

debris; detritus; dust; junk; rubble

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("junk" is a kind of...):

rubbish; scrap; trash (worthless material that is to be disposed of)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "junk"):

slack (dust consisting of a mixture of small coal fragments and coal dust and dirt that sifts out when coal is passed over a sieve)

Derivation:

junk (dispose of (something useless or old))

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Dispose of (something useless or old)

Example:

scrap your old computer

Synonyms:

junk; scrap; trash

Classified under:

Verbs of buying, selling, owning

Hypernyms (to "junk" is one way to...):

cast aside; cast away; cast out; chuck out; discard; dispose; fling; put away; throw away; throw out; toss; toss away; toss out (throw or cast away)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Derivation:

junk (the remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Researchers in Australia believe the technology would be able to change the path of orbital junk to prevent collisions with satellites.

(Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk, VOA)

Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Two Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans each used an injection with a chemical ‘dye’, which lights up special molecules that reveal either the brain’s inflammatory cells or the junk proteins.

(Inflammation in the brain linked to several forms of dementia, University of Cambridge)

Reducing the amount of space junk in orbit has been the focus of a meeting of scientists this week in Canberra organized by Australia’s Space Environment Research Center.

(Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk, VOA)

In the second scan, the dye binds to the different types of ‘junk’ proteins found in FTD.

(Inflammation in the brain linked to several forms of dementia, University of Cambridge)

This includes an estimated half-a-million marble-sized pieces of junk, while other items, such as discarded rockets and disused parts of space crafts, are much larger.

(Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk, VOA)

The researchers showed that across the brain, and in all three types of FTD, the more inflammation in each part of the brain, the more harmful build-up of the junk proteins there is.

(Inflammation in the brain linked to several forms of dementia, University of Cambridge)

The size of a school bus, the satellite is one of the largest pieces of 'junk' in orbit and could become a catastrophic hazard if struck by other space debris and broken into fragments.

(Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk, VOA)