yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Debris | Vocabulary | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Oh hello, word Smith! You've caught me at a bit of an awkward time. You see, I've just survived a storm at sea; there was a shipwreck, and I clung to a piece of debris like a barnacle. I floated ashore like a bug on a twig.

I've got to do a word, don't I? Okay, uh, right, let's uh, let's do debris. How about that? Debris! The 'S' is silent because it comes from French. Now, this largish piece of driftwood is a great example. Debris is a noun; it means trash, remnants of broken things. I think that piece of debris floating in the water used to be the ship's crow's nest.

This word comes from French "de," which means to break apart, and we can break that word apart into two pieces: "D" or "du," meaning off, away, or down, and "breeze," meaning to break. That's what happened when a huge wave struck the ship I was on; it broke apart, and pieces of debris floated away from it.

All right, let's try to come up with some other related words that use the prefix "d" or "du" and look like the French word "bre." All right, 10 seconds, here we go. I'll put on some music. Here is what I came up with:

Debunk, to knock down a bad idea from the wonderful old-fashioned American slang term "bunkum," which means nonsense. So to debunk something is to knock the nonsense out of it. To bruise something is to cause an injury that discolors the skin. To crush, to bonk; it comes from the same root as "breeze," to break. Debate—this word means to match ideas, to argue. Its literal meaning is to beat down; "débat" in French.

The original meaning is just to fight, but its meaning was softened into an argument instead of a fistfight. Now, let's use debris in a sentence or two. After the storm, Shipbreaker Bay was clogged with flum and debris from half a dozen vessels.

Flum is one of my favorite not-words; it is specifically sea debris—the stuff that washes ashore after a shipwreck or a storm. But debris doesn't have to be shipwreck stuff; it's anything left over from when something is wrecked. You can use it figuratively like so: sighing, Danela picked at the debris of what used to be a pizza before her brothers got to it. Hardly anything remains of that pizza; just the box and a couple pieces of crust. Pizza debris—some people call those pizza bones.

I have never left the crusts on pizza; I always eat them, but to each their own. Incidentally, in New Orleans, if you order a Po'Boy—a sandwich with deb—accent on the first syllable—you're getting gravy-soaked beef. They call it "de" because that gravy is made with the remains, the debris of other roast beefs. It's an incredible sandwich—a Po'Boy with "de."

We're here for your sandwich needs and your vocabulary needs, too! We're a full-service shop here at CON. You can learn anything!

More Articles

View All
This is why we can't have nice things
This is a video about things like cars, phones, and light bulbs and an actual conspiracy that made them worse. This video was sponsored by NordVPN, more about them at the end of the video. I am outside Livermore Fire Station, number six. And in here, they…
Miyamoto Musashi - How to Build Self-Discipline
Miyamoto Musashi was a samurai who went undefeated in 61 duels, so it’s safe to say that he knew something about building self-discipline. And a week before he passed away, he wrote a short work called Dokkodo, which roughly translates to “The Way of Wal…
Heaven on Earth | The Story of God
NARRATOR: The Hindu god Vishnu is the protector of creation, and Angkor Wat was built for him. Inside the temple are over 12,000 square feet of intricately carved reliefs. One relief was created to link King Suryavarman II to Vishnu himself. Look, you can…
15 Obsessions That Translate to Fortunes
You know, some people have the right skill set to get rich, but they focus on the wrong damn thing. In business, we call this a high-level skill on a low-level opportunity. Believe it or not, some of you might have what it takes to get rich faster than mo…
The Power Of Journaling | Stoic Exercises For Inner Peace
Journaling is the habit of keeping a diary or log about our experiences, ideas, insights, and anything else that life evokes in our minds. The Stoics have a long-standing tradition in journaling, with Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations as clearest evidence. Wri…
Warren Buffett: Value Investing vs. Growth Investing
So if you tell me that you own a business that’s going to grow to the sky, and isn’t that wonderful? I don’t know whether it’s wonderful or not until I know what the economics are of that growth. How much you have to put in today, and how much you will re…