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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
jetsam
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
flotsam and jetsam
▪ He would walk along the beach collecting the flotsam and jetsam that had been washed ashore.
flotsam and jetsam
▪ works of art made from the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life
flotsam and jetsam
▪ Camps were set up to shelter the flotsam and jetsam of the war.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But there was no suspicious heap lying grounded in the shallows, no flotsam or jetsam at all.
▪ Carey bobbed like jetsam, always awkward even though Ellwood was swimming with the tide.
▪ Elisabeth Valley is presenting a first solo exhibition by Sébastien De Ganay, whose paintings incorporate jetsam of various kinds.
▪ Flotsam and jetsam of the universe.
▪ It regarded them as mere jetsam, to be banished from the world like delinquents or the incorrigibly idle.
▪ She liked to wonder how a particular piece of jetsam had got there.
▪ Their wives, hand in hand, stepping carefully in expensive shoes over the summer's jetsam, brought up the rear.
▪ There was, as Archie had promised, plenty of good kindling among the piled jetsam on the beach.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Jetsam

Jetsam \Jet"sam\, Jetson \Jet"son\, n. [F. jeter to throw: cf. OF. getaison a throwing. Cf. Flotsam, Jettison.]

  1. (Mar. Law) Goods which sink when cast into the sea, and remain under water; -- distinguished from flotsam, goods which float, and ligan (or lagan), goods which are sunk attached to a buoy.

  2. The act of throwing objects from a ship to lighten the load; jettison[1]. See Jettison, 1.

  3. Hence: Anything thrown overboard from a ship, whether floating or not.

  4. Hence: [fig.] Objects scattered about in a disorderly manner; as, he couldn't find his sneakers among the jetsam in his room. [Colloq.]

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
jetsam

1560s, jottsome "act of throwing goods overboard to lighten a ship," alteration and contraction of Middle English jetteson, from Anglo-French getteson, Old French getaison "a throwing" (see jettison). Intermediate forms were jetson, jetsome; the form perhaps was deformed by influence of flotsam. From 1590s as "goods thrown overboard;" figurative use by 1861. For distinction of meaning, see flotsam.

Wiktionary
jetsam

n. 1 articles thrown overboard from a ship or boat in order to lighten the load of a ship in distress 2 (context by extension English) discarded odds and ends

WordNet
jetsam
  1. n. the part of a ship's equipment or cargo that is thrown overboard to lighten the load in a storm

  2. the floating wreckage of a ship [syn: flotsam]

Wikipedia
Jetsam (film)

Jetsam is a 2007 British film thriller, written and directed by Simon Welsford. It was shot in the English seaside resort town of Margate for the no-budget (in film terms) sum of £3,000 (about $5,700) and stars Alex Reid, Shauna Macdonald and Jamie Draven. The two-week shoot wrapped on 27 May 2006, and pre-production was completed nearly a year later, on 8 March 2007. The film premiered at the 51st London International Film Festival, and received many positive notices. It has also received acclaim at the Slamdance Film Festival. It was finally granted a national release in the UK in August 2009.

Usage examples of "jetsam".

Cakes, chicken, ballpoint pens, packs of cards, butter - the jetsam of the air-lines, Inside this one was a hammerless Smith and Wesson, safety catch built into grip, six chambers crowded with bullets.

A special panel of two hundred talesmen filled the first half dozen rows of benches, the others being occupied by witnesses both Chinese and white, policemen and the miscellaneous human flotsam and jetsam that always manages somehow or other to find its way to a murder trial.

There he lay, among the flotsam and jetsam, his balls bleeding, his mind confounded, while moment by moment the island he had been carried to was undone, and its undoer, the Iad Uroboros, came closer to the shore on which he slept.

The occupants of the Room, hitherto strewn without more purpose than the human Jetsam of any large Seaport, all sit up at once, draw together, and with the precision of a long-rehears'd Claque, begin to chatter of Miss Davies, and Gluck, and ineluctably, Mesmer.

Wide belts studded with artificial gem-stones, rakish scarves and stage jewelry had been carelessly tossed about like so much flotsam and jetsam on a beach.

They discussed the prospects of Brown Bomber and Jetsam at the Christmas meeting (the examination was in early November and this was a means of looking beyond it).

The jetsam of divorce can be embarrassing, so you couldn't fault someone a bathtub or fruit bat rescued out of love's shipwreck, but he might have mentioned he was a cop before he suggested burying her ex and going to dinner.

Lodged in faults and crevices a hundred feet above them were nests of straw and jetsam from old high waters and the riders could hear the mutter of thunder in some nameless distance and they kept watch on the narrow shape of sky overhead for any darkness of impending rain, threading the canyon's close pressed flanks, the dry white rocks of the dead river floor round and smooth as arcane eggs.

Stencil thought of Mondaugen's story, The Crew at Foppl's, saw here the same leprous pointillism of orris root, weak jaws and bloodshot eyes, tongues and backs of teeth stained purple by this morning's homemade wine, lipstick which it seemed could be peeled off intact, tossed to the earth to join a trail of similar jetsam - the disembodied smiles or pouts which might serve, perhaps, as spoor for next generation's Crew .

Imagine sharing this space with 1,600 other similarly dashing craft, most of them in the control of some pot-bellied urban halfwit with next to no experience of powered craft, plus all the floating jetsam of rowboats, kayaks, pedalos and the like and it is a wonder that there aren't bodies all over the water.

However you might judge him as a writer, he shows us the hearts of real estate agents, car dealers, gas station owners, janitors, accountants, and many other salt-of-the-culture types (perhaps more significantly, he shows us how they perceive themselves), and the concern we feel for these folks permits us to overlook the illogics, the unwieldy plot devices, the repetitions, the supernatural flotsam and jetsam of desultorily imagined spooks and demons and creatures that crop up in his lesser novels, of which Dreamcatcher is surely one.

There was older trash mixed in the flotsam and jetsam, hardy trash that predated the stringent recycling regulations of the past century.

She got as far as filling three black trash bags with junk food jetsam and was getting ready to vacuum up the collection of sow bug corpses that dotted her carpet when she made the mistake of Windexing the television.

His hand moved to his sparse silver locks to sweep the stovepipe hat off in an elegant bow, but he let it fall again to his side as he remembered that the ancient hat was now part of the flotsam and jetsam off the New Jersey shore.

Lying here on the sand hill like so much jetsam cast up on a beach, Tommy knew he had been in God's hands during that terrifying toboggan slide down Avalanche Gulch.