flotsam
Flotsam is the floating wreckage of a ship. You'll often hear it used with the word jetsam, which refers to floating objects that have been thrown from a ship, usually to lighten it before it sinks.
You can keep flotsam and jetsam straight by remembering that flotsam looks like the word, float, and jetsam looks like jettison which means to cast off. Usually it doesn't matter though as flotsam and jetsam are used together as an expression, mostly figuratively to mean things or people who are unwanted or discarded. What about the things that are cast from a ship but sink to the ocean floor instead of floating? That's called lagan.
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the floating wreckage of a ship
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Vocabulary lists containing flotsam
Avoid pier pressure on your next trip to the beach with this salty list of maritime vocabulary.
As you read Jack London's "To Build a Fire," learn this word list. Here are links to lists for texts in Grade 11's Collection 5: To Build a Fire, The Jungle, Food Product Design, The Lowest Animal, Genesis of the Tenement, The Story of an Hour, The Fish
When a violent storm sinks the ship carrying his family from India to North America, Pi is trapped alone in a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a man-eating tiger named Richard Parker.