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Great Expectations vocabulary
12 British vocabulary words
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dustman
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tags: [britain]
► definition
Definition:a garbage collector.Originally the collector of ashes and refuse of coal fires that were deposited in dustbins. Although refuse is no longer incinerated in the homes, the name stuck.
► uses
Uses:
[Richard and Hyacinth arriving at Daisy and Onslow's house]
Hyacinth: It's the dustmen I feel sorry for. I mean how can they distinguish between what they're supposed to take and what's supposed to stay?
BBC. Keeping Up Appearances: A Picnic for Daddy
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"There is always plenty, Herbert," said I, to say something encouraging.
"O yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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But to be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don’t live—to serve on a jury and try a peasant who’s stolen a flitch of bacon,
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina
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The dustman would periodically come around to collect the dust, whence it would be hauled away to be used ultimately for bricks and manure after being carefully sifted for inadvertently discarded valuables and other salable items.Daniel Pool. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. (1993) p. 237
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A dustman nocknamed Sevenchurches in the employ of Messrs Achburn, Soulpetre and Ashreborn, prairmakers, Glintalook, was asked by the sisterhood the vexed question during his midday collation of leaver and buckrom alternatively with stenk and kitteney phie in a hashhoush and, thankeaven, responsed impulsively:
James Joyce. Finnegans Wake
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