Dreck

Word of the Day for Sunday, July 28, 2013

Dreck \drek\, noun:

1. worthless trash; junk.
2. excrement; dung.

Though composed rapidly, it's a better elegy than Milton's to Edward King or Shelley's on the death of John Keats, which is pure dreck—revolting, sentimental dreck.
-- Joseph Heller, God Knows, 1997

But in the end it's all dreck, or if not dreck then some form of bathetic aspiration: for our lives to course as smoothly, shifted but never stopped, draining into some glorious & storied sea.
-- Jonathan Miles, Dear American Airlines, 2009

Dreck entered English in the 1920s from the Yiddish word drek, which comes from the German word Dreck meaning "filth."

Thanks to: www.dictionary.com