Rubble is the broken pieces of buildings, walls, or structures that remain after they've been destroyed or have fallen apart. When an old building is demolished, the piles of shattered concrete, crumbled bricks, and twisted metal left behind are rubble. After an earthquake or tornado, rescue workers often search through rubble looking for survivors.

Today, rubble describes any messy heap of building debris, whether from controlled demolition, a natural disaster, or the collapse of something old and neglected.

You might see rubble at a construction site where workers are tearing down an old structure to make room for something new. Archaeologists sometimes carefully excavate ancient rubble to find artifacts and learn about past civilizations. Rubble from destroyed buildings can tell them what materials people used and how structures were built.

The word suggests more than just any pile of junk: it specifically means the broken remains of something that was once solid and whole, now reduced to rubble.