as in debris
the portion or bits of something left over or behind after it has been destroyed
the dispirited family picked through the flotsam of their possessions after the hurricane, looking for anything that could be salvaged
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Recent Examples of flotsam
The headlamps of their truck illuminated little more than a wedge of flotsam.
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Paige Williams, The New Yorker, 17 June 2024
Living in White Plains, N.Y., in the 1980s, Mrs. Wallace galvanized a broad campaign to rescue the river, at the time an inaccessible 23-mile watercourse that was home to more flotsam, like the carcasses of junked cars and rusted refrigerators, than fauna.
—Sam Roberts, New York Times, 1 Mar. 2024
At dawn, the water flowed through some city streets like coastal rivers, moving jellyfish, seaweed and flotsam several blocks landward.
—Reuters, CNN, 7 Feb. 2024
The European Space Agency, NASA and other spacefaring organizations across the globe have been looking for ways to mitigate the ever-growing cosmic junkyard of old satellites and rocket flotsam crowding Earth's orbit.
—Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 11 Jan. 2024
See all Example Sentences for flotsam 
Paige Williams, The New Yorker, 17 June 2024
Living in White Plains, N.Y., in the 1980s, Mrs. Wallace galvanized a broad campaign to rescue the river, at the time an inaccessible 23-mile watercourse that was home to more flotsam, like the carcasses of junked cars and rusted refrigerators, than fauna.
—Sam Roberts, New York Times, 1 Mar. 2024
At dawn, the water flowed through some city streets like coastal rivers, moving jellyfish, seaweed and flotsam several blocks landward.
—Reuters, CNN, 7 Feb. 2024
The European Space Agency, NASA and other spacefaring organizations across the globe have been looking for ways to mitigate the ever-growing cosmic junkyard of old satellites and rocket flotsam crowding Earth's orbit.
—Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 11 Jan. 2024
See all Example Sentences for flotsam
Recent Examples of Synonyms for flotsam
Noun
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About 11 million years ago, an asteroid collided with Mars, sending plumes of debris beyond the planet’s atmosphere.Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 14 Nov. 2024
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Deep water surrounded much of the area, so someone had placed sheets of wood on top of a chain link fence and balanced both on blocks of plastic foam, creating a makeshift barge that could pull piles of debris from shore to shore. Skid loaders crisscrossed the nearby sand.Blake Nelson, The Mercury News, 12 Nov. 2024
Noun
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Case closed, with what’s left of Sofia’s car and Sal Maroni’s whole corpse lying in the rubble for good measure.Andy Andersen, Vulture, 10 Nov. 2024
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The lime in the rubble left behind after artillery bombardments helped fertilize the plants, which flourished across Belgium and northern France during the war, then largely disappeared once the lime was gone.Freddie Clayton, NBC News, 10 Nov. 2024
Noun
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Alfaro, 30, set up shop early Monday at a Baptist church in southeast Oklahoma City, where residents sifted through debris and emergency responders worked to restore power and clear wreckage – even as rounds of thunderstorms barreled across the region.Christopher Cann, USA TODAY, 4 Nov. 2024
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Steve Ditko buries Spider-Man under tons of unmovable, sci-machinery and wreckage, a weight that seems far above even the wall-crawler’s powers to escape from.Josh Weiss, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024
Thesaurus Entries Near flotsam
Cite this Entry
“Flotsam.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/flotsam. Accessed 1 Dec. 2024.
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