Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. of people, worthless, disreputable.

1852		H.B. Stowe Uncle Tom 31: Stout fellers last six or seven years; trashy ones get worked up in two or three.
1862		‘Edmund Kirke’ Among Pines 167: He regarded the white man as altogether too ‘trashy’ to be treated with much ceremony [DA].
1900		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 17 Mar. 6/1: When ‘Soapy’ Smith called a man a low ordinary skunk he was sure enough trashy.
1937		Z.N. Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1998) 13: Ah don’t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor.
1967		P. Thomas Down These Mean Streets (1970) 67: I knows him an’ he’s a good boy — at least good for what comes outta this heah trashy neighbourhood.
1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 85: I’m sick a these eastside trashy niggers.
1923		Chicago Defender 1 Dec. in Harrison Black Pearls (1988) 32: I am a poor girl and would like for some respectable man, who is interested in theatre work to help give me a start. [...] I don’t want anything trashy.

2. (US) characteristic of poor white trash n.

1933		(con. 1850s) R. Bradford Kingdom Coming 48: Efn I had me my free papers and a trashy Law put he hands on me, I’d make a behime at him and tell him to git on about his own.
1935		Z.N. Hurston Mules and Men (1995) 84: Bout this-time John seen a white couple come in but they looked so trashy he figgered they was piney woods crackers.
1941		Warner, Junker & al. Color & Human Nature 174: ‘A family of poor whites moved into the neighborhood, and they fought with us and called us “nigger.” Those people were so trashy; I surely didn’t want to act and look like them’.
1971		B. Moyers Listening to America 261: I don’t like a common, lowdown trashy white person either.
1990		(con. c.1970) G. Hasford Phantom Blooper 228: I say, ‘Those fucking pogue liters . . .’ My mother is stunned. ‘James! Don’t you dare use that trashy language in my house!’.
1992		R.C. Cruz Straight Outta Compton 69: Trashy-looking white dames with cigarettes in their hands watched and smiled.
2000		T. Blacker Kill Your Darlings 19: I could expect a year of stories about car lots and trailer parks, trashy, tragic wives and defeated, self-pitying husbands.
2022		I. Fitzgerald Dirtbag, Massachusetts 71: My home, a trashy place where I felt comfortable.

3. sluttish, tarty.

1953		J. Thompson Savage Night (1991) 128: You and your dear, sweet — t-trashy little —.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 64: lewd, vulgar, pornographic [...] trashy (‘Oh, you’re such a trashy thing – I love it!’).
2010		IOL News (Western Cape) 27 July 🌐 ‘These two trashy girls can’t even put two words in Italian together,’ sniffed one commentator.