noun
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same as wreck
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the act of wrecking or the state of being wrecked; ruin or destruction
Etymology
Origin of wreckage
Explanation
What's left behind after a destructive accident or disaster is called wreckage. The day after tornadoes sweep through a town, its inhabitants might search the wreckage of their houses for mementoes and valuables. When a bomb goes off, a city floods, or a house burns down, mangled pieces of buildings and cars often remain — wreckage that's a reminder of the catastrophe. After the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, the wreckage sat on the ocean floor for decades before divers found it. Wreckage comes from wreck, originally "goods washed ashore after a shipwreck."
Vocabulary lists containing wreckage
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -age
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for June 12–June 18, 2021
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Compound Fracture
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As would “Little Bear Ridge Road,” Samuel D. Hunter’s savagely unsentimental study of an estranged aunt and nephew picking through the wreckage of their family history.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 8, 2026
This doesn’t work for Alice, however, who goes from disbelief to sabotage to an act of betrayal whose wreckage spills out over the series and blows back on her.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 8, 2026
It shared images of the burnt out wreckage of a car on a road outside the village.
From BBC • Jun. 6, 2026
The poems remain resistant, as they must; but their resistance now carries the force of address, a bottle sent out from wreckage toward an unknown reader.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 5, 2026
She turned toward the wreckage of the chandelier, but a demon rushed at her.
From "Aru Shah and the End of Time" by Roshani Chokshi
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
