dross
/drɒs
/noun [mass noun]
1Something regarded as worthless; rubbish: there are bargains if you have the patience to sift through the dross...
- Having recently renewed my subscription to Crikey (rather reluctantly), I was thinking as I read through today's dross that it is finally time to quit and ask for a refund.
- We briefly considered handing in our resignations, but then we shrugged our shoulders and got back to the business of turning this dross into something that could be published less than 24 hours later.
- This movie is not completely without value, but there's a lot of sub-par dross to be sifted through to get to the worthwhile material.
Synonyms
rubbish, junk, debris, chaff, draff, detritus, flotsam and jetsam;
North American trash, garbage
informal dreck
British informal grot
2Foreign matter, dregs, or mineral waste, in particular scum formed on the surface of molten metal: alchemists tried to create gold from dross...
- It was my delight to watch and speak with some of the old-timers there, and one chap used to astonish me by washing his hands, scooping the dross from the surface of some molten metal, then splashing his hands in it!
- Secondary smelting is a related process used to recover nonferrous metals and alloys from new and used scrap and dross.
- Blast furnaces are used to recycle slag, dross, and residues from other processes.
Derivatives
drossy
/ adjective (drossier, drossiest) ...- As this kind of drossy pop goes, this goes decently enough.
Origin
Old English drōs (in the sense 'scum on molten metal'); related to Dutch droesem and German Drusen 'dregs, lees'.