rubbage

plural rubbages

1. alternativedialectaluncountableusuallyAlternative form of rubbish.

   I didn't want him to buy any more rubbage.

   1974, G[erald] B[asil] Edwards, The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, London: Hamish Hamilton, published 1981, →ISBN; republished New York, N.Y.: New York Review Books, 2007, →ISBN, page 209

   4 more examples

   E'er since poor Cheapside cross in rubbage lay, [...]

   1646, John Hall, “A Satire”, in Poems, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Printed by Roger Daniel, printer to the Universitie, for J. Rothwell, […], →OCLC; republished London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816, →OCLC, book I, page 34

   "And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" / "No, sah—nuffn' else."

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter VIII, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 65

   Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstoryshortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubbages on to soil here.

   [1939 May 4, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, London: Faber and Faber Limited, →OCLC; republished London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1960, →OCLC, part I, page 17

   CRUFT: that which magically amounds in the Clubroom just before you walk in to clean up. In other words, rubbage. / [September 2005 commentary]: [...] Rubbage is a rare term for rubbish, but I had heard it used growing up in New England.

   1959 June, Peter R. Samson, “An Abridged Dictionary of the TMRC Language”, in Personal Web Page of Peter R. Samson, published September 2005, archived from the original on 18 Jan 2019