ONLY GEOLOGISTS USE PLURAL FORM OF `DEBRIS’

Question: My fourth-grade son recently brought home a weekly spelling list that included the word “debri.” I could not find the word in the dictionary, so I wrote a note to my son’s teacher. She informed me that “debri” is the singular form of “debris.” I have always thought that “debris” is the spelling for the singular as well as the plural. Can you clarify this?

Answer: It sounds as if your son’s teacher is in serious need of spelling lessons herself. There is no such word as “debri.” “Debris,” when pronounced with the “s” silent, is indeed a singular noun. It is also, in its usual sense, a “non-count” noun, which means that it has no plural form in that sense. Thus, in “debris was scattered for miles by the storm,” “debris” is a singular noun that refers to an undifferentiated mass of objects, the way words like “wreckage,” “garbage” and “trash” do. It isn’t possible to speak of “a single debris” or “a dozen debris.”

“Debris” was borrowed directly from French in the 18th century. (The French word is derived from the Middle French verb “de-bris-er,” which means “to break to pieces.”) Originally the word was used in English only in a figurative way, as in “the debris of an empire.” The word was originally felt to have a plural form, like “remains,” and was pronounced accordingly. (Though spelled the same as the singular, the plural is pronounced with an audible “s” that sounds like “z” – as in “de-breez.”)

In the 19th century the science of geology began using the French word to refer in English to an accumulation of rock fragments. The plural pronunciation was also used for this sense.

It was only after this second borrowing that the wider sense of “debris,” referring literally to anything broken or destroyed, came into use in English. Since then, a new sense has been added: one synonymous with “rubbish.” While the difference in meaning may seem subtle at first, the “rubbish” sense does not require that debris be made up of anything broken to bits – it includes discarded things as well (as in “the debris left by the picnickers”).

The plural pronunciation is still used for the geological sense, but the everyday use of “debris” is in its noncount sense, and nowadays we rarely hear that final “s.”

Question: I have always wondered why the names for types of meat, like “beef’ and “pork,” are different from the names of the animals the meat comes from. Is there a reason for this?

Answer: The difference between the names of various animals and the meats they provide has its origin in the Middle Ages. The names of familiar farm animals, “cow,” “pig,” “sheep,” and “chicken,” all have their roots in Old English. Up to the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, the ancestors of these words were used to describe both the animal and the meat it produced.

But the rule of England by a Norman, French-speaking aristocracy slowly changed that. The words “beef,” “pork,” “mutton,” and “poultry” are all of French origin, and the ancestors of these words were invariably used by the Normans to describe the types of meat brought to their tables as well as the animals providing the meat. The conquered Anglo-Saxon serfs provided the care of the animals, and so their names for the animals persisted in the language. But it was the Normans who actually ate the meat, and consequently their names for that meat were gradually assimilated into the language. By the 15th century, this difference in usage was well established, and it has endured ever since.