Words at Play : Words that Used to Mean Something Different
Original Definition:
the internal parts of an animal: viscera
Example:
"Take white Pigeons, and fatten them with Pyneapple kernelles, the space of xv daies, and than kil them: and having cast away the head, the feete, and the guttes, with all the garbage, distill them in a limbecke ..." – Girolamo Ruscelli (translated by W. Warde), The Secretes of the Reverende Maister Alexis of Piemount, 1558
About the Word:
Garbage is hardly the only food-related word to have taken on a meaning that is far afield from what it once was. Meat formerly was used to refer to food of any kind, and not just to the flesh of an animal. Also liquor was once used to refer to liquid of any sort, rather than to a substance that is productive of hangovers.
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