Meanings
plural garbage mitts
- CanadaWesternin pluralespecially ManitobaA thick hide mitten, with thick pile lining.
She looked like a man, like a miniature version of Buck wearing his old red toque with the ragged pompom, his garbage mitts stained with fish blood, the army green parka.
2004, Cara Hedley, Twenty Miles, Toronto: Coach House Books, published 2007, page 1882 more examples
Western kids often wore what they called “garbage mitts”—padded for heavy duty by city workers—instead of hockey gloves; Maritimers used their father’s work gauntlets, with heavy leather up the wrists. But the essential rules were the same everywhere: no goal-sucking, no raising, unless whoever’s younger brother was stuck in goal was also foolish enough to wear shin-pads, no long shots, no throwing your stick to stop a breakaway.
1981, Peter Gzowski, The Game of Our Lives, Surrey, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing, published 2004, page 77I would get into the most fabulous fistfights — dropping my garbage mitts and hurling my fluxing body onto another adolescent, and we would roll around in the freshly plower street tasting salt and each other’s fists.
2005, Jon Paul Fiorentino, “Electrolux”, in Asthmatica, Toronto: Insomniac Press, page 29
Origin
A type of mitt once commonly seen worn in cold weather by garbagemen.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
garbage mitt. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/garbage%20mitt
“garbage mitt.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/garbage%20mitt. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “garbage mitt,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/garbage%20mitt.
Source: garbage mitt on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.