Comment 26 for bug 406626

I agree that the most important thing is to stick with a single consistent term. That said, I'm not sure about 'Trash' and think 'Wastebasket' is the better term.

The criteria for selecting this term shouldn't just be relative popularity or familiarity. It should also be that it communicates the meanings we want the term to communicate.

The whole idea of the Trash/Wastebasket is that it is a temporary receptical which is emptied at a later date, and which items can be retreived from. Wastebasket suggests a waste paper basket; the kind of thing that lives under a desk. Things can be easily retreived from a wastebasket. Trash suggests something different. Trash is general refuse - the bin in your kitchen or by your back door. It isn't easy or common to retreive things from your trash.

'Wastebasket' communicates the functionality we are trying to describe better than 'trash', therefore. The semantics of these two terms can be easily seen by doing a Google image seach for each one.