Detritus and Literature

'Detritus' is a term which refers not only to rubbish or waste: it has a further and chequered history. 'Detritus' also suggests something manufactured which is thrown away. Like 'waste', 'detritus' may refer to anything marginal, dysfunctional or silly ('silly' both in the older meaning of 'useless' and the present sense of 'foolish'). 'Detritus' is of course a rather posh word, the more usual terms, used as expletives, are 'rubbish' and 'junk'. Other terms are rather less polite, and may be used when one wants to signal strong disagreement. 'Rubbish!' is also a one-word sentence: it says that an opinion is inappropriate or downright wrong. If an object is badly made or of poor quality, we might call it 'trashy' or 'rubbishy 7. Both 'trash' and 'rubbish' in the sense of 'worthless stuff appeared in the English language early in the 17th century, whereas 'detritus' is a late 18th century coinage based on Latin or perhaps French; it refers to something rubbed off or left over and fit to be thrown away. The use of 'rubbish' as an introjection is even later, namely Victorian. In contemporary British English it is also used as a verb and means 'to criticize severely:' a critic may 'rubbish' an argument. 'Rubbish', then, is a term that serves as a noun, a verb, an adjective and an expletive. Although it seems to be a colloquial rather than a literary word like 'detritus', it deserves attention because it also has poetic and social functions.