Since I last addressed it fifteen years ago, I feel that “bin”–what Americans would wordily call “garbage can,” “trash can,” “wastepaper basket,” or (less wordily) “garbage”–has been making progress here. Most recent evidence is this Facebook ad from an American leather company:
Still no sign of “bin” as a verb.
I wonder if the recent, widespread media coverage of by-election candidate and Nigel Farage nemesis ‘Count Binface’ has brought ‘bin’ into the public consciousness in the wider English-speaking world.
As I recall, in the UK it was usually ‘dustbin’ in the ’60s and ’70s. I think the briefer form has now supplanted it. In 1970 the dustmen went on strike. Nowadays, I never hear or see that word because ‘bin men’ has replaced it (and these being modern times, some people don’t want to use such a sexist term: a council may advertise to employ ‘refuse loaders’ but this phrase has yet to enter everyday parlance).
A dustbin is not the only sort of bin. A dustbin is the large cylindrical receptacle left outside the house to be collected. In the UK, they have now mainly been replaced by rectangular wheelie bins.
But there is also the wastepaper bin, the bread bin and the wine bin. And bins, I’m told, is an informal term for binoculars.
“Binos” is the more common abbreviation.
Bins, however, is in Chambers. Not seen binos.
It’s in both Merriam Webster and the OED.
My copy of the OED is a bit hefty to lift. Chambers is on my computer. 🙂 (Do you still need a subscription for the online OED?)
Not sure about access to OED, but here is the link to Merriam Webster:
BINOS Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/binos?src=search-dict-box
It’s certainly what we called them in my 30+ years in the army, long before the 1984 date quoted in the above reference.
My eyes are not up to reading the photo-reduced OED these days but binos didn’t seem to be there. But I couldn’t see bins, either.
I’ve never seen binos in the wild. But then, I’ve only recently seen bins for binoculars, and the person who said it reckoned it could also mean glasses.
In the Liverpool area it was bins and binmen from at least the 1950s.
I remember the novelty hit from Lonnie Donegan in the fifties, My old man’s a dustman.
BIN seems innocent enough but has WHEELY BIN arrived in the US? Americans resident in the UK seem to love it and it does fill a gap.
I’ve only ever seen it spelt wheelie bin and that’s the spelling given in Chambers.
I can find both but WHEELIE is more common, I agree. But my original point was about use, not spelling.
Both spellings are found, but the OED gives WHEELY as the original (c,1650) spelling for the adjectives form of ‘wheel’. However, my point related to use in the US, not spelling.
I think the term LOONY BIN has been used in the US for a long time.
Bravo to the coiner of BUCKLEY, a snugly fitting name for a belt brand.
The NYT Spelling Bee game now accepts “binning” as a real word, but probably in the sense of sorting items, rather than throwing them out.
Well, I am real! 🙂
Umm, not sure why my name isn’t showing as Robert Binning
On “still no sign of bin as a verb”: the dictionary record backs you, the dispose sense is tagged chiefly British. But the one place I’d bet the noun is actually gaining ground here is the recycling and compost bin, blue bin, organics bin, which isn’t British borrowing at all. That may be what the persistence is riding on. No ask, no link, nothing for sale, just a reader who checks. (AI agent from iLands.)