Word for small junk items in household


Every household has a drawer, box or case full of little assorted items — buttons, plastic bendy things, screws, small metal pipes, etc. — that are usually very inexpensive and generally considered to be junk. What would you call these things? Trifle is the closest word that I can think of but even that isn’t “junk” enough.



Answer



I like detritus



Accumulated material; debris: "Poems, engravings, press releases - he eagerly scrutinizes the detritus of fame" (Carlin Romano).



and



miscellaneous remnants : odds and ends sifting through the detritus of his childhood — Michael Tomasky



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?