Today’s Words That Work: Detritus

Detritus (dih-TRY-tus) — from the Latin for “rubbing away” — is debris, the remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up (e.g., small stone fragments formed by the process of erosion).

Example (as used by Angus MacLachlan in The New York Times): “The year I helped move my parents out of the house they’d been in for more than 40 years, we would drag some of the detritus of the ages to the street and then stumble back for another load, and in the seven minutes it took to bring some more junk to the curb, the first pile would be picked clean.”