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rubble - 4 dictionary results

rub⋅ble

[ruhb-uhl or, for 3, 4, roo-buhl]
–noun
1. broken bits and pieces of anything, as that which is demolished: Bombing reduced the town to rubble.
2. any solid substance, as ice, in irregularly broken pieces.
3. rough fragments of broken stone, formed by geological processes, in quarrying, etc., and sometimes used in masonry.
4. masonry built of rough fragments of broken stone.

Origin:
1350–1400; ME rubel, robil < ?; cf. rubbish
rub·ble   (rŭb'əl)   
n.  
  1. A loose mass of angular fragments of rock or masonry crumbled by natural or human forces.
    1. Irregular fragments or pieces of rock used in masonry.
    2. The masonry made with such rocks.

[Middle English rubel.]
rub'bly adj.

Rubble

Rub"ble\, n. [From an assumed Old French dim. of robe See Rubbish.]

1. Water-worn or rough broken stones; broken bricks, etc., used in coarse masonry, or to fill up between the facing courses of walls.

Inside [the wall] there was rubble or mortar. --Jowett (Thucyd.).

2. Rough stone as it comes from the quarry; also, a quarryman's term for the upper fragmentary and decomposed portion of a mass of stone; brash. --Brande & C.

3. (Geol.) A mass or stratum of fragments or rock lying under the alluvium, and derived from the neighboring rock. --Lyell.

4. pl. The whole of the bran of wheat before it is sorted into pollard, bran, etc. [Prov. Eng.] --Simmonds.

Coursed rubble, rubble masonry in which courses are formed by leveling off the work at certain heights.
Language Translation for : rubble
Spanish: escombros, cascajo,
German: der Schutt,
Japanese: かけら

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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