rubble
Syllables: rub·ble/ˈɹʌb.əl/
rubble noun: the broken remains of an object, usually rock or masonry.
Noun
rubble (countable and uncountable, plural rubbles)
- 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.1956 October, “Summer Floods in Scotland”, in Railway Magazine, page 658
- The old boulevard now was a sagging ruin, waiting for the wreckers. … You'd have to loathe yourself vividly to be indifferent to such destruction or, worse, rejoice at the crushing of the locus of these middle-class settlements, glad that history had made rubble of them.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 72
- 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 stratified1855, Sir Charles Lyell, A Manual of Elementary Geology
- The whole of the bran of wheat before it is sorted into pollard, bran, etc.
Verb
rubble (third-person singular simple present rubbles, present participle rubbling, simple past and past participle rubbled)
- To break down into rubble.
rubble meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
rubble in Tamil
- சீரில் கட்டுமானக் கல், உடைபருங்கல், கண்டகல், உடைசல், இடிசல், சிதைபொருள்
rubble in Bengali
- ধ্বংসস্তূপ, পাথরের টুকরো
rubble in Malayalam
- ചരല്, പൊളിഞ്ഞ ഇഷ്ടികപ്പണി
rubble in Kannada
- ಕಲ್ಲುಮಣ್ಣು
More languagesFewer languages
- rubble in Nepali
- मलबे
- rubble in Arabic
- أَنْقَاض ʔanqāḍ, رُكام rukām
- rubble in Malay
- puing
- rubble in Indonesian
- puing
Examples of rubble in a sentence
- I poked about in the rubble, trying to find my lost keys.
- The asteroid belt consists of a collection of dust, rubble, and minor planets.
- The demolition team smashed the buildings to rubble.
Forms of rubble
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | rubbles |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | rubbles |
| present participle | rubbling |
| past participle | rubbled |
| past | rubbled |
Origin of rubble
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.
Words formed from rubble
Phrases with rubble
Words that rhyme with rubble
Questions about rubble
- What does rubble mean?
- Rubble means the broken remains of an object, usually rock or masonry.
- What is rubble in Tamil?
- Rubble in Tamil is சீரில் கட்டுமானக் கல், உடைபருங்கல், கண்டகல். See Rubble meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is rubble?
- Rubble can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce rubble?
- Rubble is pronounced /ˈɹʌb.əl/.
- What is the plural of rubble?
- The plural of rubble is rubbles.
Words near rubble in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rubble (page history and authors); rubble (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rubble (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rubble (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rubble (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rubble (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-rubble.ogg.
Cite this entry: “rubble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rubble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.