DETRITUS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Detritus

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/dɪtrˈaɪtəs/ /dˈɛtrətəs/ Listen

noun

Detritus n.

(Geol.) A mass of substances worn off from solid bodies by attrition, and reduced to small portions; as, diluvial detritus. Note: For large portions, the word débris is used.

Hence: Any fragments separated from the body to which they belonged; any product of disintegration. "The mass of detritus of which modern languages are composed."

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Etymology of 'Detritus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Detritus" Quotes from Famous Books

... sea,"[69] he states that the sea is the most potent destroyer of the land, and that the material thus removed is deposited either on the land or along the shores of the sea. He thought that the levels of the valleys are at present being raised, owing to the deposit of detritus in them. He points out that the deposits laid down by the ocean do not extend far out to sea, "that consequently the elevations of new mountains in the sea, by the deposition of sediment, is a process very difficult ...

— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... themselves might deter a good many people from cluttering them thus, and so might public education, stiff fines, and the provision of better municipal pickup and dumping facilities. But mainly getting rid of such detritus is probably going to be a matter of fairly continuous gathering and disposal. On navigable waters like those of the upper Potomac estuary, ingenious collection craft under the command of Army Engineers are in ...

— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... moist and wooded regions of the earth. Deriving sustenance, as they for the most part do, in connection with the decomposition of organic matter, they are usually to be found upon or near decaying logs, sticks, leaves, and other masses of vegetable detritus, wherever the quantity of such material is sufficient to insure continuous moisture. In fruit, however, as will appear hereafter, slime-moulds may occur on objects of any and every sort. Their minuteness retires them from ordinary ...

— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride

... were meant originally for the sleep or death of nature in her snow-white shroud, and the return of the sun; but woe to the boy who on first learning these stories should have declared that they were mere bosh, or, as Sir Walter Scott says, the detritus of nature-myths. ...

— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... continued the professor, "the atoll is simply an annular terminal moraine of detritus shed alluvially into the sea, thus leaving a geosyncline of volcanic ash embedded with an occasional trilobite and the fragments of scoria, upon which ...

— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

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