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rubble

[ruhb-uhl or, for 3, 4, roo-buhl]

Example Sentences Origin

noun

broken bits and pieces of anything, as that which is demolished: Bombing reduced the town to rubble.

any solid substance, as ice, in irregularly broken pieces.

rough fragments of broken stone, formed by geological processes, in quarrying, etc., and sometimes used in masonry.

masonry built of rough fragments of broken stone.

Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English rubel, robil < ?; compare rubbish

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To rubble

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Rubble is always a great word to know.

So is callithumpian. Does it mean:

a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Example Sentences

After the quake she helped lug the conservatory's grand pianos from the rubble.

Unless you were trapped in the rubble and slowly died of thirst.

The main effect of this money is to make the rubble bounce.

EXPAND

After the quake she helped lug the conservatory's grand pianos from the rubble.

Unless you were trapped in the rubble and slowly died of thirst.

The main effect of this money is to make the rubble bounce.

The only dry land consists of a few spits of sun-whitened coral rubble and the dead shells of giant clams.

He swings the pick a few times before kneeling to inspect something unusual and then worries at some loose rubble with his hands.

Close behind is their mother, scrambling frantically through the rubble with her skirts hiked up.

He filled it with smooth rock instead of the usual rubble.

Caterpillar wriggles through rubble with a camera on its head to find live victims.

What the people digging through the rubble here at the center of the earthquake zone are pulling out now is entirely inanimate.

He hauled people out of rubble and helped them to walk uptown for miles that day.

The corpses and rubble that littered the streets during five months of civil strife have gone.

It was unreal-an entire city had been reduced to rubble.

Your own street is a clutter of rubble and collapsed buildings.

The cultist becomes noticeably less conscious, my chunk of rubble colliding with his left ear.

Children in blood-stained uniforms are buried in rubble.

Haiti's emergency will continue long after the last survivor has been lifted from the rubble.

Thousands of people were believed to be trapped in the rubble.

Thousands cross within hours, and souvenir hunters soon reduce the wall to rubble.

Soldiers shoveled rubble while residents lined up belongings.

In their battle for power, these two parties have reduced their country to rubble and their countrymen to penury.

The earthquake demolished buildings and trapped scores of people under rubble.

Glaciers moved down from the mountains, dragging along rocks and the rubble that would be left behind when the ice melted.

The capital's port was wrecked, its airport badly damaged, and its roads choked with rubble and bodies.

They had so much rubble to clear, he says, that they often keeled over in the heat under the weight of their protective gear.

See incredible footage of the tsunami swamping cities and turning buildings into rubble.

No one is alive under the rubble any more, but many people are in mortal danger.

Two were killed, and their office and warehouse of supplies were both reduced to rubble.

The rubble that fell back into the crater, known as megabreccia, is likely some of the oldest exposed rock on the red planet.

Within seconds, the formerly orderly grid of the mine was reduced to rubble.

China is exploring the rubble of the global economy in hopes of accelerating its own rise.

With a bouquet of flowers held close, a woman waits as police search for her husband in the rubble of an apartment building.

Witnesses say the city resembled a war zone with bodies littering the streets and buildings reduced to rubble.

Note the coral rubble in the foreground, which was created by the net dragging on the coral reef.

They dump large piles of household rubbish and building rubble on the fields and across the path.

They emerged in a tall, chill, shoulder-wide corridor floored with rubble.

In recent weeks much of the village has been reduced to rubble.

The firefighters who died had apparently been trapped in rubble after the roof fell, fire officials said.

The plucked rubble sticks to the bottom of the glacier.

He had spotted bits of tan rope poking out of the rubble in the temple's central room.

Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after.

As the glacier moves, the rubble grinds against the ground.

He said he found children screaming and crying, and he plunged into the rubble to help pull out the.

Survivors of the devastating attack pulled shredded bodies from the rubble.

International groups said there was no longer any chance of finding survivors buried in rubble from last week's earthquake.

Several weeks after the hurricane, this neighborhood of bungalows is still scarcely more than piles of rubble.

The euphemism now lies buried beneath the rubble of reality.

What was once an archaeological treasure and tour stop became a moonscape of craters and rubble.

My web page also points out the absurdity of the mud rubble ramp theory postulated in almost all the other web pages.

Pulsars are essentially rubble from the cataclysmic explosion of.

Witnesses said security guards were buried under a mound of rubble.

Plateaus and high cliff walls bound a lunar landscape of volcanic rubble and seasonal streams.

Rogers could see rubble where the safe house had been.

Between the shattered buildings, the rubble piles, the.

Across the city rubble poured into the streets, blocking rescue workers' routes, as screams filled the air.

And a few lots cleared of rubble is not reconstruction.

And they've searched through piles of rubble after earthquakes and other disasters.

Bromley believes that the blue-grey color of some rubble indicates the presence of ash.

Five of the victims had been trying to free a mother and her daughter from the rubble.

Some are little more than giant loose rubble piles, while others are densely packed.

Objects salvaged from the rubble have recently been restored and are scheduled to go on display next year.

The tube could be inserted into a small hole drilled into a concrete slab or rubble to sniff out bodies buried underneath.

It was a conscious decision to bomb and shell villages and towns to rubble in order to minimize allied soldier losses.

In deserted villages a few houses stand among heaps of rubble.

In the ancient world, they built their great temples on the rubble of past civilizations.

Workers will knock out the remaining slices, remove the rubble and expose a single step.

Workers remove rubble from key thoroughfares that pave the way for displaced individuals to return to their homes.

We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies.

The tools, needed for emergency rescue, were under the rubble.

The infill in the timber framed upper story is rubble stone.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

rubble (ˈrʌb^əl)

—n
1.	fragments of broken stones, bricks, etc
2.	any fragmented solid material, esp the debris from ruined buildings
3.	quarrying the weathered surface layer of rock
4.	Also called: rubblework masonry constructed of broken pieces of rock, stone, etc

[C14 robyl; perhaps related to Middle English rubben to rub, or to rubbish]

'rubbly

—*adj*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

rubble

c.1400, from Anglo-Norm. *robel "bits of broken stone," probably related to rubbish, but also possibly from O.Fr. robe (see rob).

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Matching Quote

"All the old supports going, gone, this man reaches out a hand to steady himself on a ledge of rough brick that is warm in the sun: his hand feeds him messages of solidity, but his mind messages of destruction, for this breathing substance, made of earth, will be a dance of atoms, he knows it, his intelligence tells him so: there will soon be war, he is in the middle of war, where he stands will be a waste, mounds of rubble, and this solid earthy substance will be a film of dust on ruins."

-Doris Lessing

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rubble

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