Definition of "detritus" [de•tri•tus]

• Loose fragments or grains that have been worn away from rock. (noun)
• Disintegrated or eroded matter: the detritus of past civilizations. (noun)
• Accumulated material; debris: "Poems, engravings, press releases—he eagerly scrutinizes the detritus of fame” ( Carlin Romano). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "An adept hand with a pair of chopsticks is amazingly useful when removing a bit of random detritus from the garbage disposal."
• "This wretched, self-serious, self-righteous, pointless bit of science fiction detritus is based on a short story universally acknowledged as a classic of the genre, "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Henry Kuttner and Katherine L. Moore."
• "If you collected all the detritus from a 25 megaton bomb after the explosion, you would only be missing one kilogram of mass, and an average sized city."