A year or two ago I ran across a word and thought-that’s neat, I should remember that, and promptly forgot it.
The word in question means, roughly, “stuff stranded by high water (receding).” Similar to driftwood, but not limited to wood, and it isn’t flotsam or jetsam, either.
So faceless cyber knights-errant, please oh please rout my ignorance on this matter.
Wrack?
I’m thinking that wrack is more concerned with wreckage without regard to where it is found. Detritus has the same problem, and is not even limited to water wreckage.
The best I could find was strandline, which is the high-water mark left on an ebbing tide or a high-water mark from an earlier tide, (or, possibly, era).
No, wrack (or tidewrack) is the word. Although drift may also be used, wrack is the word generally preferred by beach specialists for rubbish washed ashore; although the common meaning (and its origin) point to wreckage, its technical meaning has expanded.
Valiant guesses all, but none of those are ringing a bell. The more I think about it, the more the word seemed either related to water words (wash, float, etc) or to have an -age suffix.
Also, I’m think of color that isn’t blue. Care to take a guess?
But seriously, anyone else want to take a stab at this? It’s bedeviling the bejesus out of me.
‘Flotsam’ relates to water and sounds like ‘float’. But it means the floating hull of a ship or its cargo. On the other hand, one might say ‘The flotsam washed up onto the beach.’ In which case it is stranded on the beach but might still be referred to as ‘flotsam’.
I’ve heard the terms flotsam and jetsam used occasionally…
I’m also going to guess lagan.
Hmmm. Could you possibly be thinking of “dunnage”, disposable material used for ballast and stowage of ships’ cargo that is often illegally jettisoned and washes up on shore?
The actual meaning of the word has nothing to do with tidewrack or driftwood, of course, but you might easily encounter a situation where you heard or read something like “there was a lot of dunnage washed up on the beach” and thought it just meant any form of tidewrack.
The OP says it’s not flotsam or jetsam.
missed it.
detritus?
spindrift?