Adjacent Words

Rubble definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

RUBBLE, for rubbish, vulgar and not used.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: the remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up [syn: debris, dust, junk, rubble, detritus]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English robyl Date: 14th century 1. a. broken fragments (as of rock) resulting from the decay or destruction of a building <fortifications knocked into rubble — C. S. Forester> b. a miscellaneous confused mass or group of usually broken or worthless things 2. waterworn or rough broken stones or bricks used in coarse masonry or in filling courses of walls 3. rough stone as it comes from the quarry II. transitive verb (rubbled; rubbling) Date: 1926 to reduce to rubble

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 waste or rough fragments of stone or brick etc. 2 pieces of undressed stone used, esp. as filling-in, for walls. 3 Geol. loose angular stones etc. as the covering of some rocks. 4 water-worn stones. Derivatives: rubbly adj. Etymology: ME robyl, rubel, of uncert. orig.: cf. OF robe spoils

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

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.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. When a building is destroyed, the pieces of brick, stone, or other materials that remain are referred to as rubble. Thousands of bodies are still buried under the rubble... 2. Rubble is used to refer to the small pieces of bricks and stones that are used as a bottom layer on which to build roads, paths, or houses. Brick rubble is useful as the base for paths and patios.

Moby Thesaurus

aa, abyssal rock, basalt, bedrock, block lava, brash, breccia, clamjamfry, conglomerate, crag, debris, druid stone, dust, festooned pahoehoe, gneiss, granite, igneous rock, junk, lava, limestone, litter, living rock, lumber, magma, mantlerock, metamorphic rock, monolith, pahoehoe, pillow lava, porphyry, pudding stone, raff, regolith, riffraff, rock, ropy lava, rubbish, rubblestone, sandstone, sarsen, schist, scoria, scrap, scree, sedimentary rock, shelly pahoehoe, shoddy, stone, talus, trash, truck, tufa, tuff