rubble
/ˈrʌb(ə)l
/noun [mass noun]
1Waste or rough fragments of stone, brick, concrete, etc., especially as the debris from the demolition of buildings: two buildings collapsed, trapping scores of people in the rubble...
- These old photographs show York's former garden suburb reduced to rubble following the demolition of condemned houses in the early 1960s.
- But yesterday at 12 noon Vernon House was reduced to rubble by demolition experts.
- In January, an order was served on the company demanding that rubbish, rubble and waste was cleared from the land.
Synonyms
debris, remains, ruins, wreckage;
broken bricks
1.1Pieces of rough or undressed stone used in building walls, especially as filling for cavities: the tower is built of stone rubble faced with ashlar...
- The external plaster was replaced with a lime-based plaster to allow the stone rubble walls to breathe.
- It is built of rubble stone with ashlar dressings on a granite plinth.
- As was often the case in those days, structural perimeter walls are in coursed rubble.
Derivatives
rubbly
- The ending is a blaze of light and sirens and press reporters and a standing ovation when I walk out of what could have been rubbly grave.
- A hundred thousand people had been assembled in East Berlin to hear him, on a rubbly wasteland off the Friedrichstrasse.
- It took me a couple of hours, crunching down a steep rubbly track with a panorama of mountains ahead no matter which way the path twisted.
Origin
Late Middle English: perhaps from an Anglo-Norman French alteration of Old French robe 'spoils'; compare with rubbish.