Rubble

How to spell rubble

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rubble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rubble mean?

1. nounBroken fragments of stone, brick, or concrete left after a building has collapsed or been demolished.

Rubble in a sentence

• Rescue workers dug through the rubble for hours after the explosion.

• The old factory was reduced to rubble in a single afternoon.

Where does rubble come from?

Language of origin: Other

Rubble appears in Middle English around the late 1300s, written in forms such as 'robel' or 'rubel', meaning broken fragments of stone or waste building material. Its exact source is uncertain, but it is generally linked to the same family as 'rubbish' and 'rubble' and possibly to the Anglo-French word 'robel', a diminutive sense suggesting little broken bits. The element clearly carried the idea of debris left over from building or demolition, which is precisely its meaning today. The double 'b' followed by the soft '-le' ending is the spelling trap: writers hear a single flapped consonant and a vague schwa, so the doubled letter and the final '-le' (rather than '-el' or '-al') are easy to mistake. Because the origin is genuinely murky, dictionaries hedge, but the practical link to 'rubbish' is a handy memory aid for the spelling.

How the word is built

• rubb- (broken stone, related to 'rubbish')
• -le (noun suffix denoting a collective mass)