A person who is gathers a bunch of trash and attempts to make use of it if not convert its original purpose to serve as something else.
Person A: So I just finish building my new home. But I decided to build it out of the things from a junkyard.
Person B: Well hopefully it doesn't fall on you while you are sleep.
Person A: Welll im more confident that it won't because I built it.
Person B: *Sigh* Sometimes being a junker isn't a good thing in this case.
Person A: Now I need to fix my car.
Landed aristocracy of Prussia and Eastern Germany. "Junker" in German means country squire. The particle "von" before their family names indicated their belonging to the nobility.
1. An old car that doesn't qualify for the $4,500 cash trade-in incentive from the government because it gets more than 15 mpg.
2. The sudden realization that your old beater vehicle is lost in the twilight zone between "generally worthless" and "totally worthless," forcing you to keep driving it for another year -- at least.
"I just looked up the mileage for my 1996 RAV4. The stupid Junker Flunker gets 16 mpg, which means I won't be getting any of that governmentcash after all. Drat!"