The cards that are not dealt or that are discarded in certain card games form what is known as discard. This term is linked to the verb discard, which means to exclude something or someone, to dispense or not to admit.
In some games, therefore, to discard is to leave the cards in hand. The cards that are discarded are considered useless and, through discard, the intention is to replace them with others that have not yet been dealt and that could be more convenient in the game.
At a general level, discarding is everything that does not work or is left over. The disposable is what can be discarded or is disposable. For example: "The most impoverished sectors of the city are fed with the discards of the most luxurious restaurants" , "The team does not have money to hire great figures, so it will have to seek reinforcements among the discards of the other clubs" , " You cannot build a house with discards of other works: you run the risk that the security conditions are not the best ” .
However, in addition to the above, we cannot ignore the fact that within the world of sport it is very common to use the term that we are now analyzing. More specifically, it is used in group disciplines, such as basketball or soccer, to refer to those players that the coach does not call a match.
A personal decision of the coach, an injury or the risk of suffering a relapse into a disease are some of the reasons that lead the professional who leads the team to consider that one or more players are not going to be part of it in a match, that is, they will be the discards.
A clear example of this meaning can be the following: "The Spanish coach, Vicente del Bosque, had to establish two discards within the group among the possible players who were going to go to the World Cup and chose Cesc Fabregas and Fernando Torres."
Also in the health field, the term discard is also used. In this case, it is used to define all those tests that are performed on a person for any ailment with the clear objective of being able to exclude certain diseases.
In this way, it is common to speak of what is known as ruling out diabetes or ruling out cholesterol, which, as their own names indicate, are tests to reject that the person in question suffers from either of these two pathologies that need to have the corresponding treatment.
The discarded material can be thrown away since it is a waste (which is unusable after having completed a job or operation). The reuse of materials is called recycling, a process that gives new life to what was already considered waste.
Ultimately, it can be said that discarding consists of letting go of something that, at least for oneself, is useless at the present time.