Learn Arabic › B2 › حُطام
حُطام
debris, wreckage, rubble /ħʊˈtˤɑːm/
nounB2#3757 most common
Also: ruins, shattered remains, chaff (of dried plant life)
Example sentences
البَيْتُ الآنَ حُطَامٌ.
The house is now rubble.
رَأَيْنَا حُطَامَ السَّيَّارَةِ بَعْدَ الحَادِثِ.
We saw the car wreckage after the accident.
تَرَكَ الزِّلْزَالُ المَدِينَةَ حُطَامًا.
The earthquake left the city in rubble.
بَحَثَ العُمَّالُ بَيْنَ حُطَامِ المَبْنَى عَنْ نَاجِينَ.
The workers searched among the building's rubble for survivors.
لَيْسَتِ الدُّنْيَا فِي نَظَرِ الحُكَمَاءِ إِلَّا حُطَامًا زَائِلًا.
In the view of the wise, the world is nothing but fleeting rubble.
يَصِفُ القُرْآنُ الحَيَاةَ الدُّنْيَا بِأَنَّهَا كَزَرْعٍ يَخْضَرُّ ثُمَّ يَهِيجُ فَيَصِيرُ حُطَامًا.
The Quran describes worldly life as a crop that turns green, then withers, and becomes debris.
Declension
| Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | حُطَامٌ | None |
| Genitive | حُطَامٍ | None |
| Accusative | حُطَامًا | None |
| Vocative | يَا حُطَامُ | None |
Word family
حَطَمَto smash, break, crush
حُطْمَةa single fragment of debris
مُحَطَّمshattered, broken (also 'devastated', of a person)
حَطِيمthe low-walled area next to the Kaaba
الحُطَمَة'The Crusher', a name for Hellfire in the Quran
Etymology
حُطام comes from the Arabic triliteral root ح-ط-م (H-T-M), which carries the sense of breaking, smashing, or crushing something into pieces. The pattern فُعال turns that root into a mass noun for the resulting broken matter, so حُطام denotes the debris or fragments left after something is shattered. Arabic is a Semitic language, not an Indo-European one, so it has no Proto-Indo-European root.
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