Definition of "flotsam" []

• Wreckage or cargo that remains afloat after a ship has sunk. (noun)
• Floating refuse or debris. (noun)
• Discarded odds and ends. (noun)
• Vagrant, usually destitute people. (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.

• "Rourke describes its dark banks well: its trolley-littered bed, its murky depths, its surface covered in flotsam and streaks of oily pollution."
• "Frenchman — a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean wreck and landed to grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the coast of Maine."
• "a Frenchman — a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean wreck and landed to grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the coast of Maine."