litterbug

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From litter +‎ bug. Coined in 1947 by New York copywriter Paul B. Gioni for The American Ad Council,[1] perhaps punning on jitterbug.

Pronunciation

  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈlɪtɚˌbʌɡ/

Noun

litterbug (plural litterbugs)

  1. (informal) A person who tends to drop litter and not clean it up.
    Synonym: litter lout
    • 1967, Arlo Guthrie, “Alice's Restaurant”:
      […] I mean I'm sittin' here, on the Group W bench, 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages, after being a litterbug
    • 2021 January 8, Nicole Hemmer, “The striking parallels between the assaults on Charlottesville and the Capitol”, in CNN‎[2]:
      Pretending a litterbug and a spree killer have committed equivalent infractions doesn’t make people safer.
    • 2023 April 18, Sam Roberts, “John J. Doherty, Stalwart Sanitation Commissioner, Dies at 84”, in The New York Times‎[3], →ISSN, archived from the original on 26 December 2024:
      Mr. Doherty was known to publicly berate litterbugs and upbraid motorists whose stranded cars prevented plows from clearing snow.

Translations

References

  1. ^ “Pollution: Keep America Beautiful - Iron Eyes Cody (1961–1983)”, in Ad Council‎[1], 10 July 2018 (last accessed), archived from the original on 30 October 2008
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.