Dictionary

garbage mitt en · NOUN

Etymology

A type of mitt once commonly seen worn in cold weather by garbagemen.

Meanings

1. (Canada, Western, in-plural, qualifier:especially Manitoba) A thick hide mitten, with thick pile lining.
   • I would get into the most fabulous fistfights — dropping my garbage mitts and hurling my fluxing body onto another adolescent, and we would roll around in the freshly plower street tasting salt and each other’s fists. 2005, Jon Paul Fiorentino, “Electrolux”, in Asthmatica, Toronto: Insomniac Press, page 29:
   • Western kids often wore what they called “garbage mitts”—padded for heavy duty by city workers—instead of hockey gloves; Maritimers used their father’s work gauntlets, with heavy leather up the wrists. But the essential rules were the same everywhere: no goal-sucking, no raising, unless whoever’s younger brother was stuck in goal was also foolish enough to wear shin-pads, no long shots, no throwing your stick to stop a breakaway. 1981, Peter Gzowski, The Game of Our Lives, Surrey, B.C.: Heritage House Publishing, published 2004, page 77:
   • She looked like a man, like a miniature version of Buck wearing his old red toque with the ragged pompom, his garbage mitts stained with fish blood, the army green parka. 2004, Cara Hedley, Twenty Miles, Toronto: Coach House Books, published 2007, page 188:

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