jetsam
/ˈdʒɛts(ə)m
/noun [mass noun]
Unwanted material or goods that have been thrown overboard from a ship and washed ashore, especially material that has been discarded to lighten the vessel: there was plenty of good kindling among the jetsam on the beach figurative the jetsam of technology...Compare with flotsam.
- Flotsam and jetsam drifted from the yacht, some having already washed ashore.
- Liberation simply travels, picking up junk and jetsam along the way, discarding it somewhere downstream, and rambling on.
- I love how when you look up flotsam in the dictionary it says jetsam.
Origin
Late 16th century (as jetson): from jettison.
flotsam from early 17th century:
This legal term for wreckage found floating on the sea or washed up on the beach, comes ultimately from French, from the verb floter ‘to float’. Flotsam and jetsam is useless or discarded objects. Jetsam came originally from jettison (Late Middle English), a term for the deliberate throwing of goods overboard to lighten a ship in distress, which came ultimately from the Latin verb jactare ‘to throw’. In the 16th century it was shortened to give us first the spelling jetson and then our modern word jetsam. There are strict legal distinctions made between what you can do with flotsam and with jetsam.
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