The order Insectivora provides such a taxonomic wastebasket in classifications of the placental mammals.

For these reasons, the study of idioms, proverbs, stock metaphors, and other conversational gambits has been mostly discouraged, and at best relegated to research in pragmatics, or the “linguistic wastebasket” […]

ante 1924 (posthumous, died 1910): Mark Twain, Autobiography
I was aweary, aweary, and I put it in the waste basket. Ten days later the bill came again, and with it a shadowy threat. I waste-basketed it.

Wastebasket

Meaning

Noun

Verb

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