junk [LME] In the Middle Ages junk was a name for old or inferior rope. By the mid 19th century the current sense of ‘old and discarded articles, rubbish’ had developed. From there came the slang sense ‘heroin or other narcotic drugs’ in the 1920s, the source of junkie [1920s] ‘a drug addict’. Junk food has been making us obese since the early 1970s. For the boat see oceanian words.