[Ads-l] Trash Panda

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Excellent work, Ben and Dave.
The term "white trash panda" occurred on twitter in 2011. One tweet
includes #fb which suggests that the term was found on Facebook. The
term "white trash panda" may have been clipped to yield "trash panda"
although this does shift the meaning.

https://x.com/MaxfieldBlue/status/81778807081664513
[Begin tweet info]
MaxfieldBlue @MaxfieldBlue
Raccoons are just white trash pandas. #fb
1:42 PM · Jun 17, 2011
[End tweet info]

https://x.com/browngt5/status/81777116970102784
[Begin tweet info]
Taylor Brown @browngt5
RT @beatpunk: @browngt5 RT @heyitsurban Raccoons are just white trash pandas.
1:35 PM · Jun 17, 2011
[End tweet info]

Garson

On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 8:21 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Way back in 2016, Dave Wilton brought up "trash panda," a facetious term
> for "raccoon" that's still popular, with an active subreddit,
> https://www.reddit.com/r/trashpandas/ . Dave dated the term to 2015, but it
> first popped up on Reddit a year before that.
>
> ---
> Carl Peligro, Jan. 13, 2014, /r/aww
> raccoons = trash pandas
> https://web.archive.org/web/20200317183940/https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/1v382q/raccoon_in_a_suit/ceockdk/
>
> ---
>
> This early use was mentioned in a Business Insider article from Sept. 2015.
>
> https://www.businessinsider.com/trash-panda-subreddit-raccoon-pictures-2015-9
> https://web.archive.org/web/20150930171423/http://www.techinsider.io/trash-panda-subreddit-raccoon-pictures-2015-9
>
> --bgz
>
> On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 10:27 AM Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > "Trash panda" as a term for raccoon.
> >
> > It seems to have arisen in 2015. Urban Dictionary has an entry dated 26
> > July 2015. My Facebook feed is overrun with the term. (The creatures are
> > major pest here in Toronto.) And there's at least one Reddit feed
> > devoted to videos and images of "cute" trash pandas.
> >
> > I've found a couple of ambiguous references from earlier. One is a Saint
> > John, New Brunswick music group "Trash Panda & and The Plywood Carousel
> > Rejects" (Telegraph-Journal, 30 Jan 2007).
> >
> > The other is the from Michael Shilling's 2009 novel "Rock Bottom": "The
> > box was impaled on her heel. She shook her foot, but it wouldn't come
> > off, hanging there like a little baby trash panda." There's no further
> > elaboration of the term, so it's not clear if it refers specifically to
> > raccoons or just to a supposed panda characteristic to cling to things.
> >
> >
> > --Dave Wilton
> >    Department of English, University of Toronto
> >    dave.wilton at utoronto.ca / dave at wilton.net
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org