discard - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From dis- +‎ card. Compare Spanish descartar.

discard (third-person singular simple present discards, present participle discarding, simple past and past participle discarded)

  1. (transitive) To throw away, to reject.
    Synonyms: cast aside, cast away, dismiss, jettison, dispose of, eliminate, get rid of, throw aside, throw away, throw down; see also Thesaurus:junk
    • 1832, [Isaac Taylor], Saturday Evening. […], London: Holdsworth and Ball, →OCLC:
      A man discards the follies of boyhood.
    • 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, pages 67–68:
      My next stop is Oxford, which has also grown with the addition of new platforms to accommodate the Chiltern Railways service to London via Bicester - although, short sightedly, the planned electrification from Paddington was canned. Evidence of the volte-face can be seen along the line at places such as Radley, where mast piles are already sunk or lie discarded at the lineside.
  2. (intransitive, card games) To make a discard; to throw out a card.
  3. To dismiss from employment, confidence, or favour; to discharge.
    Synonyms: fire, let go, sack; see also Thesaurus:lay off

to discard, set aside — see remove

to throw away, reject

to throw out a playing card

discard (plural discards)

  1. Anything discarded.
  2. One or more discarded playing cards in a card game.
    • 1923, Ernest Bramah, The Eyes of Max Carrados:
      "Stroll across and see how the game is going," suggested Carrados. "Have a look at Crediton's discard and then come back."
  3. The act of discarding.
    • 1923, Ernest Bramah, The Eyes of Max Carrados:
      Spinola was hovering about the external fittings of the figure with unusual fussiness. When at length he released the left hand it seemed for an almost perceptible moment that the action hung. Then the arm descended and carried out the discard.
  4. (programming) A temporary variable used to receive a value of no importance and unable to be read later.
    • 2017, Andrew Troelsen, Philip Japikse, Pro C# 7: With .NET and .NET Core, page 120:
      Discards can be used with out parameters, with tuples, with pattern matching (Chapters 6 and 8), or even as stand-alone variables.

anything discarded

discarded playing card