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wreckage

UK/ˈɹɛkɪdʒ/US/ˈɹɛkɪdʒ/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,847 of 15,258neutral

Wreckage is what is left after something is destroyed. Sift the wreckage, pulled from the wreckage, the wreckage of a career.

It is a mass noun with no plural, so it is a lot of wreckage rather than many wreckages. It applies to lives and plans as readily as to aircraft, and the figurative use is common enough that nobody notices it is a metaphor.

Ian Paterson · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of wreckage

  1. 1nounwreckageWhat is left after something is destroyed.B2

    “Rescuers searched the wreckage of the plane for survivors.”

wreckage is a remains.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *wreg- — to track; to hunt; to follow

  2. Anglo-Norman

    wrek

  3. Middle English

    wrek

  4. English

    wreck

  5. English, today

    wreckage

From wreck + -age. wreck comes from Middle English wrek, from Anglo-Norman wrek, from Old Norse wrek, from Proto-Germanic wrekaną (“to pursue”), from Proto-Indo-European wreg- (“to track; to hunt; to follow”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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wreckage in the wild

  • An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site.

    1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident

  • The town came to international attention in December 1988, when the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed there following a terrorist bomb attack aboard the flight.

    Lockerbie

  • Numerous expeditions unsuccessfully tried using sonar to map the seabed in the hope of finding the wreckage.

    Wreck of the Titanic

  • The US military initially prepared F-15E fighters to destroy the wreckage, but claimed to abort the strike due to civilians at the site.

    1999 F-117A shootdown

  • Russian officials examined the wreckage, potentially contributing to the development of the Sukhoi Su-57 fighter and under development Tupolev PAK DA bomber.

    1999 F-117A shootdown

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the wrek family

wreckwreckage

wreckage — used about once every 1,595 pages · #5,847 · point at the bar for the others