Perhaps Pappy fans are so insatiable that they even want the detritus of their favorite tot. Her fantastical accumulations of detritus and throwaway goods can seem to pack more whimsy than wallop. And then she came up with the idea of asking him to fiddle with his collection of detritus. The artist is drinking beer, smoking and the detritus is building up around him. The soil bears less the character of detritus , and more that of alluvium, than that seen above. Various fragments of stalactites and stalagmites were found as part of the detritus. How I envied the rabbits overhead, who occasionally dislodged the detritus of rock, which fell upon me. The effect of this action is immensely to increase the amount of detritus which the streams convey to the sea.

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Use detritus in a sentence. An example of detritus is small pieces of shale broken off by erosion. An example of detritus is the leaves that have fallen from a tree in winter. Sentences Sentence examples. By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Please set a username for yourself.
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To save this word, you'll need to log in. After the first hard freeze of fall, gardens are sadly littered with the detritus of the summer's plants and produce: stalks, leaves, vines, rotted vegetables, and maybe even a hand trowel left behind. As the flooding Mississippi River retreats back to its ordinary course, it leaves detritus behind in its wake, debris gathered from everywhere by the raging waters. The detritus of civilization may include junkyards and abandoned buildings; mental detritus may include all kinds of useless trivia.
Detritus typically includes the bodies or fragments of bodies of dead organisms , and fecal material. Detritus typically hosts communities of microorganisms that colonize and decompose i. In terrestrial ecosystems it is present as leaf litter and other organic matter that is intermixed with soil , which is denominated " soil organic matter ". The detritus of aquatic ecosystems is organic material that is suspended in the water and accumulates in depositions on the floor of the body of water ; when this floor is a seabed , such a deposition is denominated " marine snow ". The corpses of dead plants or animals, material derived from animal tissues e.