rubble

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The broken remains of an object, usually rock or masonry.

   The main East Coast line from Edinburgh to Berwick was blocked at Cockburnspath and Grantshouse by flood water, which washed away part of an embankment, and by the collapse of about 300 tons of rubble on to the track.

2. 2
   noun

   A mass or stratum of fragments of rock lying under the alluvium and derived from the neighbouring rock.

   The overlying beds are composed of such calcareous rubble and flints, rudely stratified

3. 3
   noun

   the remains of something that has been destroyed or broken up

4. 4
   noun

   The whole of the bran of wheat before it is sorted into pollard, bran, etc.

5. 5
   verb

   To break down into rubble.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English rouble, rubel, robel, robeil, from Anglo-Norman *robel (“bits of broken stone”). Presumably related to rubbish, originally of same meaning (waste material, bits of stone, rubble). Ultimately presumably from Old Norse rubba (“to huddle, crowd together, heap up", possibly also "to rub, scrape”), from Proto-Germanic *rubbōną (“to rub, scrape”), related to Proto-Germanic *reufaną (“to tear”), *raubōną (“to rob, steal, plunder”), perhaps via Old French robe (English rob (“steal”)) in sense of “plunder, destroy”; see also Middle English, Middle French -el.