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If the case were made for the regional difference in term used for the same referent, there is a case for having the entry. Move to RfV to encourage collection of the evidence. DCDuringTALK15:17, 23 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
But it's not junk in the typical sense of things we would throw away. Consider:
M. Diane McCormick, "A Place for Everything",Old-House Journal (Jun 2005), v. 33, no. 3, p. 33:
Crammed with twist ties and stray screws, the standard junk drawer is a sanctuary for items we hoard out of practicality or affection or the nagging fear that "this may come in handy someday".
There's nothing wrong with having a junk drawer. Where else can you store those odds and ends you need from time to time. But some of what ends up in the junk drawer really is junk, such as unfixable items, pens that don't work, expired coupons, and a piece to a game you sold at a garage sale five years ago.
We all know that the junk drawer doesn't really contain junk. We know junk when we see it, and that gets tossed pretty fast. It's the odds and ends that had a limited purpose once, are still functional, and one day may come in handy, but for now . . .
William D. Tracy, "Notes on Practice", The Journal of the Allied Societies (1912), Vol. 7, p. 376.
With a 5/8-inch sandpaper disk cutter, if you happen to have one in the junk drawer, or with a brass or steel tube of the same size sharpened to an edge at one end, four wheels suitable for the engine mandrel may be cut from each eraser.
I was adding the second quote while you wrote this, but note the emphasis in the second one, on what "really is junk". I'll expand on that just a bit. It is not merely "miscellany", but rather is, as Bennett suggests, a collection of small items that are not otherwise classifiable, and which have a limited potential purpose. bd2412T22:03, 23 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
I agree with MG on this particular point of semantics without prejudice to the possibility of regional difference in terms referring to the same thing, which might justify inclusion.
I find literary discussions of the term, such as those above, to be more mentions than usage. It is a staple of humor both to find slightly quirky uses of language and to make fun of human pack-rat behavior. (See "Fibber McGee's closet" (from WIWAL).A drawer is called a junk drawer as a pejorative or an excuse for its being disorganized. A "junk drawer" is not different from a "j. box", "j. closet", "j. room", "j. shed", or "j. corner", except that drawers are more common.
The phrase incorporates a particular use of the word "junk" which is not the most obvious one. Imagine explaining to a foreigner that you keep the useful little implement for the occasion in your "junk drawer". bd2412T22:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
Are you saying that the use of "junk" in "junk drawer" significantly differs from its use in "junk pile", "junk shop", "junk heap", "junk room", "junk store", and "junk dealer" or that some or all of these merit inclusion? The very existence of commercial enterprises in "junk" implies that there is potentially positive value to junk in the eyes of some, though many find it not worth sorting and researching. In any event, we merely need to have a definition of "junk" that encompasses elements omitted from our existing senses, if such there be.
Oddly enough, my stationary drawer is not stationary at all! In any case, I've come around to a "set phrase" justification, below. bd2412T13:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
You mean junkdrawer? The only way I can find enough cites for that to meet the CFI is to go to Google Groups, but those results are sloppy. However, I now think we should keep this as a set phrase, since it is used for this specific meaning with far greater frequency than "trash drawer" or "garbage drawer", both of which get Google Books hits in the dozens rather than the thousands, and are just as likely to actually refer to a pull-out garbage bin. "Knick-knack drawer" and "miscellany drawer" get fewer than ten usable hits each. bd2412T13:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
Delete per DCDuring's excellent analysis. (Of course, if junkdrawer is inclusible, then COLAMINE will apply, and we'd keep this.)—msh210℠15:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
OTOH, of the first 100 uses in Google News, 0 were from outside the US.
I wouldn't mind seeing some actual analysis that settled the question of "junk drawer" being a set phrase, rather than depending on unsubstantiated assertions as is our wont.
"Trash" and "garbage" are not very close synonyms for "junk". "Trash" and "garbage" are low value and already placed in a location for disposal. The collocations with these in literal usage are clearly related to the waste disposal process. DCDuringTALK16:07, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
Seems simple enough. What word "foo" would you consider a reasonable synonym for junk, such that if it were not a set phrase, you would expect to see comparable number of hits for "foo drawer"? I did try "knick-knack" and "miscellany". bd2412T21:13, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
I don't know of one, but I don't see how that can be a required test, especially since "junk" has the enormous advantage over most potential synonyms of being of one syllable. I have identified the sense of "junk" as being common to "junk closet", "junk pile", "junk box", etc. The sense of drawer is the same as the one in "pencil drawer", "silverware drawer", "sock drawer", etc. I don't know of any good synonyms for "drawer" either. It is interesting to me that "junkdrawer" and "junk-drawer" are apparently not attestable from edited sources. Such alternations are typical of true lexical units (the rationale for "coalmine"). Neither term seems to have any meaning other than one that exists in other common collocations. DCDuringTALK23:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
But keep it anyway, because now I've become sentimentally attached to it, and will be sad if it is deleted. Also, it's not exactly a slam-dunk case for deletion. Cheers! bd2412T01:15, 25 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
Does the existence of a set of products called "junk drawer organizers" change the situation at all? This suggests to me that this is less of what I would have thought of as a "junk drawer" (old rusty bits of whatever), and more like what my family calls an "everything drawer." -- Visviva19:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)Reply
Here is an additional piece of evidence to consider:
2002, Alison Comish Thorne, Leave the dishes in the sink: adventures of an activist in conservative Utah, p. 71:
Today's generation of young mothers also believe the trash drawer is a good idea, but terminology changes and they call it the junk drawer.
I think this is important as it shows an evolution in terminology over time, suggesting that the current usage must be idiomatic because it supersedes a previous idiomatic usage. Cheers! bd2412T16:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Isn't the limitation of the word as used in the phrase to one of several possible senses exactly what makes it idiomatic? Or is that a set phrase? Either way, the determination that this kind of drawer was previously called a trash drawer, but is no longer (that is, in modern parlance, "trash drawer" would be incorrect and "junk drawer" would be correct) would qualify both "trash drawer" (as obsolete) and "junk drawer" as entries. bd2412T15:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I think we would need to establish that "junk drawer" is replacing "trash drawer", but that "junk" is not replacing "trash" in other uses, especially attributive. I look forward to BYU making their corpus of historical American usage available this summer.
All of the sources I have found are American. I'm not sure how to search for UK uses. However, I tried searching for "junk drawer" AND centre OR colour OR labour and got 37 hits, compared to 536 hits for "junk drawer" AND center OR color OR labor. By the way, a search for "trash drawer" yields an overwhelming number of hits favoring a tall kitchen drawer in which a garbage bag is inserted for collection of actual refuse. bd2412T17:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I have added an entry for trash drawer accordingly. Also, as I mentioned above, "knick-knack drawer" (which is listed in the entry as the UK equivalent) gets a paltry number of hits. In any event, there is not, at this point, a clear consensus for deletion of this entry. bd2412T17:17, 6 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Delete. “A drawer for your junk.” What's all this about “set phrase?” I still don't see that in our CFI. —MichaelZ. 2010-06-07 18:15 z
Regarding this and trash drawer, if we were proposing the etymology for deletion, youd win hands down. Unfortunately we're proposing the entries for deletion because of their meanings, not their etymologies. And you seem unable to justify that at all, simply showing us citations. Since it's sum of parts, of course there are going to be citations. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Why fire truck would not merit inclusion? Because, how would you show that it is not just a sum of parts? The etymology for that entry merely says, fire + truck. Since a junk drawer is not a drawer made of junk, or a drawer which is itself a piece of junk, or something that is a drawer of junk (either in the sense of drawing a picture or towing something), how would we go about proving what it is? bd2412T17:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
So you're gonna drop your whole fire truck argument before even starting it? The client-centered approach says that a good English speaker seeing junk and drawer together knows what it means with any explanation. A pencil drawer isn't made of pencils, a paper drawer isn't made of paper, a pen drawer isn't made of pens. As much as I like these arguments, they're not relevant to CFI. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
How have I dropped the fire truck argument? I'm saying that they are essentially the same. You point to the "good English speaker", which suggests someone who doesn't particularly need a dictionary. There is a translation section in "junk drawer" (albeit with only one translation at this point, which may just be a question of finding others), so the entry would seem to be of use to that vast majority of people in the world who are not good English speakers, and who might well think that a "junk drawer" is a device that draws junk, or a drawer full of things that should be thrown away as useless. A good English speaker would also presumably know a fire truck is not a truck made of fire, so if this entry is deleted, why shouldn't fire truck be deleted too? bd2412T17:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
I'm asking you why they're the same. IMO junk drawer could refer to at least three definitions of junk (1, 2, and 3) as it stands. So if kept, it needs three definitions, not one. So, explain why it's impossible to show that fire truck would not merit inclusion. I seem to have wrong footed you simply by asking you to explain what you meant. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Your assessment is incorrect. The citations for junk drawer indicate that the only applicable definition of junk is sense 2. We even have citations here directly stating that "We all know that the junk drawer doesn't really contain junk", and that a junk drawer is for things which "may come in handy", and for "odds and ends you need from time". Find me a citation for a "junk drawer" referring to one of the other senses you mention and you'll have a case for the phrase not being set. bd2412T22:52, 8 June 2010 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Our entry: "(US) A drawer designated for the storage of various miscellaneous, small, occasionally useful items of little value." OED's entry (added very recently, in June 2019): "a drawer in which miscellaneous, small, occasionally useful items are stored." Equinox◑14:07, 15 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
