Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
I wrote:
It seems timely to document the scrapheap fire that is the 2016 USA General Election....
Does the metaphor 'scrapheap fire' work? I was aiming for an Oz equivalent to the USA/Canadian slang expression 'dumpster fire', a very common pundit turn of phrase in relation to the Trump campaign.
Short version: Australian English has no direct analogue of the US/CA idiom "dumpster fire". We'd understand "train wreck", "clusterfuck", & "complete cock-up". Due to US TV, movies, &c, "trashcan" & "dumpster" are understood, but we'd be more likely to say "rubbish bin" & "skip". The only use of "scrapheap" I can think of is being the "consigned to the scrapheap of industry". Amusingly, the Fowler 1e definition of {\textsc Battered Ornaments} begins with "On this rubbish-heap [...]". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dumpster#Synonyms ==> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skip#English "Skip" is a "open-topped rubbish bin" (dumpster) in Australian English. The big ones are the size of the flatbed of a 4-wheel medium truck (lorry, not ute/pickup). They are used for special occasions, like construction sites. They look a bit like this, except painted brown and no lid or side doors: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10m3_rear_load_dumpster.jpg The small ones are the about the size of a truck's *cabin*. They are steel, typically painted blue or green, and have a black plastic (possibly steel on older units). They have steel hoops on each side; a truck with front forks hooks into them and flips the bin over the truck cabin and tips it into the the truck's onboard container. It's common to see 1 to 3 of them out the back of retail businesses. The look a bit like this: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_dumpster.jpg I have *never* seen a fire in any of them. Setting fire to rubbish is probably illegal, at least in urban and suburban areas. It'd probably wreck the skip, too. (Possibly the waste is properly incinerated after collection & before landfill, but I wouldn't bet on it. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill#Restrictions) In rural areas, I've occasionally seen bonfires, but I dunno if those were to dispose of waste, or just because Fuck Yeah, Fire Is Cool! We also don't (AFAIK) have that thing where the homeless have a "trash can fire" for heat. Probably just because our winters are milder. About 0.5% of Australians are homeless.