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debris

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
9
Words With Friends
10
Letters
6
Pronunciation
/ˈdɛbɹi/(UK)
See all 3 pronunciations
/ˈdɛbɹi/(UK) · /ˈdeɪbɹi/(UK) · /dəˈbɹiː/(US)

Definition of debris

3 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (uncountable)Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed.
    “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.”
    “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.”
See all 3 definitions

noun

  1. (uncountable)Rubble, wreckage, scattered remains of something destroyed.
    “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.”
    “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. (uncountable)Litter and discarded refuse.
    “[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. (uncountable)Large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

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…

See full etymology

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.

Anagrams of debris

6 plays · some not in Scrabble

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Words you can make from debris

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6-letter words

2 words

5-letter words

14 words

4-letter words

27 words

3-letter words

23 words

2-letter words

10 words

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