garbage patchn.
/ˈɡɑːbɪdʒ patʃ/, U.S. /ˈɡɑrbɪdʒ ˌpætʃ/ 1. A piece of otherwise unused land, used as a place for dumping unwanted material, rubbish, etc.; an area of wasteland.
ΚΠ
1894 Sterling (Illinois) Standard 9 Aug. ii. Let us fix up our garbage patch at the end of the bridge so that it will present at least a respectable appearance.
1963 Times Lit. Suppl. 11 Oct. 813/2 A derelict station on a garbage patch which is now ripe for development.
2019 @csmithpoli 7 Mar. in twitter.com (accessed 10 May 2019) If we don't build an arena at Lebreton, we should build it at the Hurdman garbage patch!
2. A mass of discarded rubbish or other waste material, esp. a loose aggregation of debris and refuse gathered and held in place in a large area of an ocean by circulating currents. Oceanic garbage patches are largely made up of tiny pieces of plastic spread across a wide area.
ΚΠ
1922 Sabbath Recorder 19 June 979/1 The older [logging] camps are almost entirely lacking in sanitary arrangements, either for the men or the garbage. No screens hinder the flies as they buzz in from the garbage patch.
1988 Daily Intelligencer (Doylestown, Pa.) 29 May a 15/5 Last week, a patch of dying vegetation sprinkled with a smattering of household garbage washed ashore on Long Beach Island... Tourists have probably already forgotten reports of last week's garbage patch.
1995 Times Lit. Suppl. 13 Jan. 28/3 The ingenious raft..escapes pirates, collision with a container ship, and the Pacific's ‘Great Garbage Patch’ of man-made rubbish.
2019 Malta Independent (Nexis) 22 Apr. There are seven garbage patches in our oceans... The one in the South Pacific is 9,493 times the size of Malta.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2020; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1894