debris
- 1Rubble, wreckage, and scattered remains left behind when something is destroyed.
Rescue workers searched the debris for survivors after the explosion.
Tornado debris covered the entire neighborhood for blocks.
Similarwreckage, rubble, detritus
Note
The French origin explains this core sense: débris is built on bris, "broken", which comes from a verb meaning to break apart or shatter. In English the word is uncountable, so it takes a singular verb: the debris was cleared, never the debris were. Detritus is a close synonym, but debris is the plain word for what a hurricane or an explosion leaves behind.
- 2Litter and discarded waste left scattered around a place.
Volunteers collected bags of debris along the beach.
Plastic debris floated in the harbor near the docks.
Similartrash, garbage, junk, litter, rubbish
Note
Here nothing has been wrecked; the material was simply thrown away and left to gather. The word often pairs with a material or a setting, as in plastic debris or marine debris. Because it cannot be counted directly, a single item is a piece of debris. Researchers studying ocean pollution speak of pieces of debris, not debrises.
- 3
- 4Large rock fragments left behind by a melting glacier.
Geologists mapped the debris deposited by the retreating glacier.
Boulders and gravel form the debris strewn across the moraine.
Note
A geologist's word for rock broken and moved by natural forces rather than by any act of destruction. Glaciers are the classic agent, though not the only one. As the ice melts back, it leaves large fragments strewn across the ground it once covered. Unlike the wreckage sense, nothing here was built and then destroyed. The ice did the breaking.
Practice
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Origin
Debris was borrowed from French débris, from dé- plus bris ('broken, crumbled'), or from Middle French debriser ('to break apart'). This traces back through Old French to Frankish and Proto-Germanic roots meaning 'to break violently, shatter', and is related to English 'burst'.