Preposition: of

• war: Across Afghanistan, the detritus of war has become a plaything for generations of children.

• life: Personal possessions remain the detritus of a life which must be tidied away.

• culture: Plastic bottles, plastic packets, the broken plastic detritus of western consumer culture all piled up on an Indonesian beach.

• place: Then there is the collecting, an obsessive fascination for the residue and detritus of the histories places contain.

• society: Looking at the detritus of modern society Wayne Chisnall uses found objects to question our value systems and to challenge accepted notions of esthetics.

Converse of object

• leave: On pattering paws, they sally forth to examine the scatter of detritus left over from the party.

• collect: Collects the interesting detritus washed up on the shore and wants to open a curio shop / museum when he retires using his collection.

• remove: It is the remains of the Bonner lab rebuild and also the detritus removed during the clean up of Fossil Bluff.

• eat: Carnivorous plankton and those that eat detritus can live in deep, dark layers, so one finds quite distinct communities at different depths.

• contain: In addition, a technology park would be built alongside a ' Ground Zero Museum ' containing detritus and mementos from the Cold War.

• become: The " missing " mass, which is not eaten by consumers, becomes detritus and is decomposed.

Adjective modifier

• organic: Such particles can include small pieces of silica, pollen grains, fungal hyphae and other organic detritus 1.

• human: He found his calling among the human detritus of the time.

• general: Piles of rubbish and general detritus is still to be seen on the council unit in the market.

• other: These often form around a nucleus of some sort, which could be a sponge skeleton or other marine detritus.

• much: For Hofstadter, Spencer was an " ultra-conservative " for whom the poor were so much unfit detritus.

• volcanic: There are many large and deep clefts between very irregular volcanic detritus.

Modifies a noun

• feeder: Five sub-groups that include grazers, carnivores, filter feeders and detritus feeders.

• present: In January 2005 the number of streets with significant amounts of either litter or detritus present on them was over 12 % .

Noun used with modifier

• river: The Caddis larvae normally live on river-beds, and make cocoons for themselves from bark, gravel and other river detritus.