My thought wasn't to alias rm, but rather to make a function like rmv <file> that would move the file to a trash directory.

But of course this already exists- thanks for pointing me to the resource:)

This breaks the advice to never alias a standard command to do something radically different from its regular function.

Sure, go ahead and alias ls to have extra options like --color, but don't alias rm to do nothing, or even rm -i (-i is interactive and prompts for each file).

Why? Because one day you'll be logged into a different system that doesn't have your cushioning alias and whoops, bye-bye files.

Now that you think about it, you thought that ls output looked weird, but that didn't actually break anything.

As you suggest, yes, look into your OS's trash option, but leave rm alone.

GNOME-derived systems can use gio trash fileglob (or gvfs-trash on older systems) to put things in the actual desktop trash receptacle.

KDE's syntax sucks, but it's kioclientX move fileglob trash:/ where X may or may not be present and is a version number of some kind.

You could set up a shell function or script that fixes that syntax and give it any name you like - as long as it doesn't collide with a standard one. On that rare foreign system it won't exist and everything will be fine.