Word of the Day

: March 26, 2009

dross

noun DRAHSS

What It Means

1 : the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal

2 : waste or foreign matter : impurity

3 : something that is base, trivial, or inferior

dross in Context

The critic complained that the movies released after Oscar season were just so much dross.

Did You Know?

"Dross" has been a part of the English language since Anglo-Saxon times; one 19th-century book on Old English vocabulary dates it back to 1050 A.D. Its Old English ancestors are related to Germanic and Scandinavian words for "dregs" (as in "the dregs of the coffee") -- and, like "dregs," "dross" is a word for the less-than-desirable parts of something. Over the years, the relative worthlessness of dross has often been set in contrast to the value of gold, as for example in British poet Christina Rossetti's "The Lowest Room": "Besides, those days were golden days, / Whilst these are days of dross" (1875).