noun
definition
(chiefly geological) Pieces of rock broken off by ice, glacier, or erosion.
definition
Organic waste material from decomposing dead plants or animals.
definition
Debris or fragments of disintegrated material.
Examples of detritus in a Sentence
The coast is low and sandy and is formed by the detritus deposited by the sea current called Calema.
Sand-pumps and bailers are also required to remove detritus, water and oil from the bore-hole.
The more people who live in a home, the more clutter it seems to generate not to mention laundry, dishes, paperwork and the general detritus of day to day living.
Put the children to work on minor tasks such as emptying dishwashers, setting the table and sweeping through the house for trash and other detritus - this will save you time and teach them organization.
Strong heavy clay soils, sandy and gravelly soils, are almost entirely absent; and the mixture of soil arising from the various stratifications and from the detritus carried down to the plains has created many districts of remarkable richness.
He found his calling among the human detritus of the time.
Occurring in all temperate and tropical countries, book-scorpions live for the most part under stones, beneath the bark of trees or in vegetable detritus.
Transverse chains are thrown off from the main chain, and are separated by deep narrow valleys, some of which are watered by streams of considerable size, which, at the spring thaw, bring down a remarkable bulk of detritus.
The interior of the tableland consists for the most part of barren, grassless deserts, the surface being covered by gravel, loose fragments of rock, lava, driftsand, ashes and glacial detritus.
The benthic foraminiferal assemblage identified indicates a low oxygen environment with high organic detritus accumulation.
Dean finished dismantling the tree, cleaning up the remaining detritus of the holidays and packing away the delicate figures of a manger scene.
The terrigenous deposits consist of blue muds, red muds (abundant along the coast of Brazil, where the amount of organic matter present is insufficient to reduce the iron in the matter brought down by the great rivers to produce blue muds), green muds and sands, and volcanic and coral detritus.
The amount of alluvial matter carried is enormous; from Ruwenzori alone the detritus is very great.
It is often of very mixed origin, being derived from the detritus of many kinds of rocks, and usually forms soil of a fertile character.
In the alluvial deposits the associated minerals are chiefly those of great density and hardness, such as platinum, osmiridium and other metals of the platinum group, tinstone, chromic, magnetic and brown iron ores, diamond, ruby and sapphire, zircon, topaz, garnet, &c. which represent the more durable original constituents of the rocks whose distintegration has furnished the detritus.
The plain of Chih-li is formed principally by detritus deposited by the Pei-ho and its tributary the Hun-ho ("muddy river"), otherwise known as the Yungting-ko, and other streams having their sources in mountains of Shan-si and other ranges.
An objection has occasionally been urged against frames lowered on to the bed of a river that they are liable to be covered over by detritus or drift brought down by floods, and consequently are subject to injury or impediments in being raised.
The conditions under which the beds of coal were formed will be found described under that head; it will be sufficient to notice here that some coal seams were undoubtedl y formed by jungle or swamplike growths on the site of the deposit, and it is equally true that others were formed by the transport and deposition of vegetable detritus.
Carnivorous plankton and those that eat detritus can live in deep, dark layers, so one finds quite distinct communities at different depths.
In addition, a technology park would be built alongside a ' Ground Zero Museum ' containing detritus and mementos from the Cold War.
The " missing " mass, which is not eaten by consumers, becomes detritus and is decomposed.
Such particles can include small pieces of silica, pollen grains, fungal hyphae and other organic detritus 1.
Piles of rubbish and general detritus is still to be seen on the council unit in the market.
These often form around a nucleus of some sort, which could be a sponge skeleton or other marine detritus.
For Hofstadter, Spencer was an " ultra-conservative " for whom the poor were so much unfit detritus.
There are many large and deep clefts between very irregular volcanic detritus.
The Caddis larvae normally live on river-beds, and make cocoons for themselves from bark, gravel and other river detritus.
They have transformed a dangerous playground full of drug needles and other detritus into an oasis of tranquility for the children who live nearby.
There are stony wastes, or alluvial fans, where mountain streams emerge upon the plains, in time of flood, bringing detritus in their torrential courses from the mountain canyons and depositing it along the mountain base.
The pathological changes in malaria are due to the deposition of melanin and the detritus of red corpuscles and haemoglobin, and to the congregation of parasites in certain sites (Ross).
This wide-spreading loess area, formed partly of wind-blown sand and partly of detritus from the mountains, is known as Chul, and merges into the great plains south of the Oxus river, a great part of which is covered with modern aerial deposits.
Here and there a valley has become filled with alluvial detritus owing to some local impediment in the drainage, and when this occurs there is usually to be found a fertile and productive field for agriculture.
Later came the alluvial silting-up. Slowly, but surely, the deltas of the tributary streams advanced into the lake, floods deposited their burdens of detritus in the deeper places, the lake shallowed and shrank and in its turn yielded to the winding river of an alluvial strath, covered with peat, reeds and alders, and still liable to floods.
Depending on the region you live in, you may consider renting a pressure washer to clean the sides of the house and exterior to remove loose dirt and other detritus left by storms.
It's about organizing your clutter, eliminating the detritus and grouping like objects together.
Once you've sorted through the detritus in an area and grouped like with like, be sure to clean all surface areas.
By practicing, you will develop habits that can help you keep an area neat and minimize the addition of clutter and detritus while also keeping an area organized.
Be sure to rake up any remaining leaves and loose detritus from the winter, clean off patio furniture and check it for needing repairs.
But where the side is not a uniform scarp, but made up of a series of ridges and valleys, the tendency will be to distribute the detritus in an irregular manner, directing it away from one place and collecting it in great masses in another, so that in time the land form assumes a new appearance.
The bed of the great river maintains a fairly constant position between its extreme banks, but the channels within that bed are so constantly shifting as to require close supervision on the part of the navigation authorities; so much detritus is carried down as to form a perpetually changing series of obstructions to steamer traffic.
Hence the proportion of purely oceanic area to the total area is greater in the Pacific than in the Atlantic, the supply of detritus being smaller, and terrigenous deposits are not borne so far from land.
The most probable explanation is that the Flysch consists of the detritus washed down from the hills upon the flanks of which it was formed.
The spread of these limestones was repeatedly checked by the steady influx of detritus from the land during the pauses in movements of depression.
But in the " Drift " maps many other types of deposit are indicated, such, for instance, as the ordinary modern alluvium of rivers, and the older river terraces (River-drift of various ages), including gravels, brickearth and loam; old raised sea beaches and blown-sand (Aeolian-drift); the " Head " of Cornwall and Devon, an angular detritus consisting of stones with clay or loam; clay-with-flints, rainwash (landwash), scree and talus; the " Warp," a marine and estuarine silt and clay of the Humber; and also beds of peat and diatomite.
Most of the straths and glens have a floor of detritus which, spread out between the bases of the boundary hills, has been levelled into meadow land by the rivers and provides almost the sole arable ground in each district.
Their sides are seamed with torrents which tear down the solid rock and sweep its detritus into the glens and sea lochs.
They are depressions in the valleys, not due to local heaping up of detritus, but true rock-basins, often of great depth.
Indeed, so rapid is the infilling by the torrents which sweep down detritus from the surrounding heights that even the existing lakes are visibly diminishing.
The Lakes of the Plains lie in hollows of the glacial detritus which is strewn so thickly over the lower grounds.
The first part consists of an alluvial, low-lying plain formed in great part by the detritus brought down by the mountain streams. It is irregular in form and is broken by isolated elevations and spurs from the Cordillera.