rubble
n.the broken pieces of brick, stone, or concrete that are left after a building is destroyed.
n.the fragmented remains of stone, brick, or concrete resulting from the demolition or destruction of a structure.
“Rescue workers searched through the rubble for survivors.”
“After the earthquake, the city streets were filled with rubble from collapsed apartment buildings.”
“The historical site was reduced to a heap of smoking rubble, leaving archaeologists to piece together the remnants of the ancient temple from the debris.”
Typically functions as a collective noun for the mass of debris; rarely used in the plural.
Usage rubble of a collapsed
“One thing became clear to me; until rubble is removed, life cannot fully restart.”
“Back in Pathapur, Pooja sits in the verandah of the family's remaining house and points towards the rubble where the first one stood.”
Inherited from Middle English rouble, rubel, robel, robeil, from Anglo-Norman robel (“bits of broken stone”). Presumably related to rubbish, originally of same meaning (waste material, bits of stone, rubble). Ultimately presumably from Old Norse rubba (“to huddle, crowd together, heap up", possibly also "to rub, scrape”), from Proto-Germanic rubbōną (“to rub, scrape”), related to Proto-Germanic reufaną (“to tear”), raubōną (“to rob, steal, plunder”), perhaps via Old French robe (English rob (“steal”)) in sense of “plunder, destroy”; see also Middle English, Middle French -el.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.