debris

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See also: débris

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Borrowed from French débris, itself from dé- (de-) + bris (broken, crumbled), or from Middle French debriser (to break apart), from Old French debrisier, itself from de- + brisier (to break apart, shatter, bust), from Frankish *bristijan, *bristan, *brestan (to break violently, shatter, bust), from Proto-Germanic *brestaną (to break, burst), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrest- (to separate, burst). Cognate with Old High German bristan (to break asunder, burst), Old English berstan (to break, shatter, burst), German bersten (to burst). More at burst.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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debris (uncountable)

  1. Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed.
    Synonyms: detritus; see also Thesaurus:debris
    • 2012 December 21, David M. Halbfinger, Charles V. Bagli, Sarah Maslin Nir, “On Ravaged Coastline, It’s Rebuild Deliberately vs. Rebuild Now”, in New York Times[1]:
      His neighbors were still ripping out debris. But Mr. Ryan, a retired bricklayer who built his house by hand 30 years ago only to lose most of it to Hurricane Sandy, was already hard at work rebuilding.
    • 2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43:
      But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater.
  2. Litter and discarded refuse.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:trash
    • 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:
      [The researchers] noticed many of their pieces of [plastic marine] debris sported surface pits around two microns across. Such pits are about the size of a bacterial cell. Closer examination showed that some of these pits did, indeed, contain bacteria, […].
  3. The ruins of a broken-down structure.
  4. (geology) Large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.

Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Anagrams

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