rubble

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Broken pieces of stone, brick, or concrete left after a building has been destroyed.

   Rescue workers searched the rubble for survivors.

2. 2
   verb

   To reduce something to broken pieces.

   The earthquake rubbled entire neighbourhoods.

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.

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