One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

Beautiful Garbage

I like to share new Korean phrases and words that I hear. One thing about the Korean language is that they really know how to use portmanteaus to create language. A friend taught me 예쁜쓰레.  It translates to beautiful garbage. She used it to talk about flowers as they are only pretty for a short time, but they die quickly and become trash. In our modern wasteful society, we buy too many things that we don’t need. I know that I am guilty of this. I buy a lot of really dumb stuff and I have a problem with impulse buying. However, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Meaning

You can probably figure this one out. It is all about perspective. One person might think something is valuable while another person might think it is worthless. Growing up, my father always said that something is only worth what you can sell it for. From a purely capitalist perspective, this might be true. However, people value different objects for different reasons.

Example: Don’t throw out that picture. It might not be valuable to you, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Origin

There are alternative phrases that replace “trash” with rubbish, garbage, or junk. In this form, the phrase can be traced to Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860s) by Hector Urquhart. However, there were other similar phrases like “one man’s meat is another man’s poison” and “one man’s pleasure is another’s pain.” The meat phrase’s origin goes back to at least 1576 when Thomas Whythorne wrote [the modern English equivalent], “That which is one bodies meat is others poison.” These phrases also seem to reflect the idea that two people might value something differently. The concept also exists in many languages besides English.

Thrift Shop

Do you like thrift shops? A thrift shop is somewhere where you can buy cheap items, especially clothing. The clothes are used and / or donated. These stores are usually run to raise money for charity. You can find some really cool stuff in there. I’ve found them to be great if you want to buy props for students. There are often Halloween costumes and other items that are useful for plays. Also, I use the game Whoonu a lot for teaching English. It has been out of print for a long time so it is expensive to buy it now, if you can even find it. I bought it for $10. One man’s trash is another man’s [come up] treasure gained popularity through the Macklemore song, Thrift Shop.