Landfill

How to spell landfill

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce landfill

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does landfill mean?

1. nounA site where waste is disposed of by burying it under layers of earth.
2. verbTo dispose of waste by burying it in a prepared site.

Landfill in a sentence

• noun

  The council voted to close the old landfill near the river.

• verb

  The company chose to landfill the rubble rather than crush it for reuse.

• noun

  Most of this packaging ends up in landfill rather than being recycled.

• verb

  Local rules forbid firms to landfill untreated chemical waste.

Where does landfill come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Landfill is a transparent compound of two very old native English words, land and fill, both inherited from Old English. Land meant 'ground' or 'earth' from Germanic roots and has barely changed in spelling for over a thousand years, while fill comes from Old English fyllan, 'to make full', the same root that gives us full and fulfil. The combined term is surprisingly modern: it was coined in the twentieth century, chiefly in American engineering and municipal usage, to describe the practice of disposing of refuse by burying it in low ground and so 'filling the land'. The double l in fill is the only mild spelling trap, since the rest of the word is built from two everyday pieces. Because both halves are common standalone words, the compound reads exactly as it is spelt.

How the word is built

• land (ground, earth)
• fill (to make full, to pack with material)