Waste and the circular economy

Le détritus and « detritus » are the same Latin word borrowed twice, and everything worth knowing about the pair is the company each of them keeps. In English the word belongs to the laboratory and the essay: geologists use it for broken rock, biologists for the organic matter drifting down through water, and columnists for the leavings of modern life. It is a mass noun. It has no plural and takes no article of its own, so one writes « the detritus of a long weekend » but never « a detritus » and never « two detrituses ». It is not the word on a street sign either, where English puts « litter ». French did the opposite with the same syllables. Un détritus is countable, ordinary and small — one crisp packet, one bottle top — it pluralises without effort, and des détritus on a beach are a matter for the council rather than for a professor. Two habits follow. Do not render les détritus as « the detritus », which lifts the register several floors at once; and do sound the final s, because French pronounces it in this word.