rubble

rubble

English

Etymology

From Middle English rouble, rubel, robel, robeil, from Anglo-Norman *robel (“bits of broken stone”). Presumably related to rubbish, originally of same meaning (waste material, bits of stone, rubble).[1] Ultimately presumably from Old Norse rubba (“to huddle, crowd together, heap up", possibly also "to rub, scrape”), from Proto-Germanic *rubbōną (“to rub, scrape”), related to Proto-Germanic *reufaną (“to tear”), *raubōną (“to rob, steal, plunder”), perhaps via Old French robe (English rob (“steal”)) in sense of “plunder, destroy”;[2] see also Middle English, Middle French -el.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌb.əl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌbəl

Noun

rubble (countable and uncountable, plural rubbles)

1. The broken remains of an object, usually rock or masonry.
   • 1976, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift, New York: Avon, →ISBN, page 72:

     The old boulevard now was a sagging ruin, waiting for the wreckers. … You'd have to loathe yourself vividly to be indifferent to such destruction or, worse, rejoice at the crushing of the locus of these middle-class settlements, glad that history had made rubble of them.

   • 2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28:

     Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. […] Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.

2. (geology) A mass or stratum of fragments of rock lying under the alluvium and derived from the neighbouring rock.
   • 1855, Sir Charles Lyell, A Manual of Elementary Geology

     The overlying beds are composed of such calcareous rubble and flints, rudely stratified

3. (UK, dialect, in the plural) The whole of the bran of wheat before it is sorted into pollard, bran, etc.[3].

Derived terms

• bounce rubble, bounce the rubble
• reduce to rubble
• rubblestone
• rubblework

Related terms

• rubbish

Translations

the broken remains of an object, usually rock or masonry

Afrikaans: please add this translation if you can Aklanon: please add this translation if you can Albanian: please add this translation if you can Arabic: أَنْقَاض‎ pl (ʾanqāḍ) Armenian: please add this translation if you can Assamese: please add this translation if you can Azerbaijani: please add this translation if you can Basque: please add this translation if you can Bau Bidayuh: please add this translation if you can Belarusian: адло́мкі m pl (adlómki), абло́мкі m pl (ablómki), шчэ́бень m (ščébjenʹ), друз m (druz) Bengali: please add this translation if you can Bengali: please add this translation if you can Bikol Central: please add this translation if you can Breton: please add this translation if you can Bulgarian: отло́мки (bg) m pl (otlómki) Burmese: [Term?] Catalan: reble (ca) m Chinese: Mandarin: 瓦礫／瓦砾 (zh) (wǎlì), 碎石 (zh) (suìshí) Crimean Tatar: please add this translation if you can Czech: suť (cs) f Dutch: puin (nl) n Esperanto: ŝtonetaro, rubo Estonian: kiviprügi Finnish: rauniot French: décombres (fr) m pl, débris (fr) m, gravats (fr) m pl (plural only) Galician: entullo m, reblo m, rello (gl) m, rebo m, cascabullo (gl) m Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Schutt (de) m Hebrew: (please verify) רבד‎ (he) Hindi: please add this translation if you can Hungarian: törmelék (hu), sitt (hu) Icelandic: rústir f pl Ido: exkavuro, eskombro (io) Indonesian: puing (id) Italian: calcinacci m pl, macerie (it) f pl, detriti (it) m pl Japanese: 瓦礫 (ja) (がれき, gareki) Korean: 파편(破片) (ko) (papyeon), 와력(瓦礫) (waryeok) Latin: strāgēs f, rūdus n Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: griuvėsiai m pl Malay: puing Ottoman Turkish: مولوز‎ (moloz) Polish: rumowisko (pl) n Portuguese: entulho (pt) m (resulting from construction works), escombros (pt) m pl (resulting from destruction) Romanian: moloz (ro), dărâmătură (ro) Russian: обло́мки (ru) m pl (oblómki), ще́бень (ru) m (ščébenʹ) Slovak: please add this translation if you can Spanish: escombros (es) m pl Swahili: fusi (sw) Swedish: bråte (sv) c Talysh: Asalemi: گیلی‎ (gili) Tibetan: རྡོ་ཧྲུག (rdo hrug) Turkish: moloz (tr) Ukrainian: ула́мки m pl (ulámky), ще́бінь m (ščébinʹ)

References

1. Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
2. Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “rubble”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
3. 1858, Peter Lund Simmonds, The Dictionary of Trade Products

Anagrams

• beblur, burble, lubber, rebulb