The AI-powered English dictionary
uncountable
Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed. quotations examples
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.
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
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.
2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43
Litter and discarded refuse. quotations examples
[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, […].
2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
The ruins of a broken-down structure. examples
(geology) Large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.