debris
See also: débris
English
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editBorrowed 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
edit- (UK) IPA(key): /ˈdɛbɹi/, /ˈdeɪbɹi/
- (US, General Australian, New Zealand) IPA(key): /dəˈbɹiː/
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -ɛbɹi, -iː
- Hyphenation: de‧bris
Noun
editdebris (uncountable)
- 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.
- 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, […].
- The ruins of a broken-down structure.
- (geology) Large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.
Derived terms
editTranslations
editrubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed
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litter and discarded refuse
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ruins of a broken-down structure
|
large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Anagrams
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- English terms borrowed from French
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- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Frankish
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɛbɹi
- Rhymes:English/ɛbɹi/2 syllables
- Rhymes:English/iː
- Rhymes:English/iː/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- en:Geology