How to Use flotsam in a Sentence

flotsam

noun
  • There’s a lot of trivia and bits and bobs of flotsam that get in there.
    — Nick Hilden, Rolling Stone, 24 Feb. 2026
  • And then it was put up for auction like a piece of celebrity flotsam.
    — Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2022
  • Waves and wind send flotsam and jetsam across vast stretches of ocean.
    — Carl Hoffman, Outside Online, 3 Apr. 2018
  • Those trees were about the only thing that stopped the flotsam that shot down the water chute.
    — azcentral, 15 May 2018
  • Dark, kind of grim, not all that catchy, full of flotsam, and full of transcendence.
    — Christopher Borrelli, chicagotribune.com, 27 Aug. 2021
  • The rest of the album is engrossing film-score flotsam.
    — Jon Dolan, Rolling Stone, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Smallest flotsam and jetsam can be used as the base for your newest compost pile.
    — Sally McCabe, Philly.com, 5 Apr. 2018
  • The flotsam and jetsam of other people’s lives.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 6 May 2026
  • These bridges were designed with handrails that could be removed, so tree limbs and other bits of flotsam didn’t get stuck.
    — John Kelly, Washington Post, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Every white cap is a head sticking out of the water, every piece of flotsam is a dorsal fin.
    — James Griffiths, CNN, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Out there twirl frozen bits of flotsam left over from our solar system’s earliest moments.
    — Lee Billings, Scientific American, 22 Mar. 2018
  • The tire reef is different from the usual flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict.
    — Hillary Davis, Daily Pilot, 19 Oct. 2017
  • So it is left to Mochida to curate the flotsam and jetsam of the coronavirus.
    — Yuri Kageyama, USA TODAY, 20 Aug. 2020
  • Most of the needles had caps on, Rau said, and no one had been injured by the flotsam as of Tuesday.
    — Madeline McGee, Anchorage Daily News, 30 July 2019
  • The idea that the smell of plastic flotsam might lure animals to their doom first emerged in 2016.
    — The Economist, 12 Mar. 2020
  • But as the sheetwebs spin silk to flee an inhospitable habitat, their webs are flotsam from an evacuation.
    — Rebecca Giggs, The Atlantic, 9 Nov. 2021
  • The headlamps of their truck illuminated little more than a wedge of flotsam.
    — Paige Williams, The New Yorker, 17 June 2024
  • Nothing has surfaced recently, and studying the flotsam hasn’t produced much to go on.
    — Barbara S. Peterson, Popular Mechanics, 31 July 2018
  • The medics were treating up to 60 casualties per day; many were civilians, the flotsam of war.
    — Fred Dickey, sandiegouniontribune.com, 18 June 2017
  • The den of the model home is converted to a second bedroom, and flotsam of everyday life from the time will be in view.
    — By Roxie Hammill, kansascity.com, 30 May 2017
  • Everything was saved by default, so all the flotsam and jetsam of daily work was captured in a sort of running ledger.
    — Ellen Cushing, The Atlantic, 12 Oct. 2021
  • As the snow melts into muck, little clusters of flotsam and jetsam emerge in the far corners of everyone’s yards.
    — Sally Higginson, chicagotribune.com, 7 Mar. 2018
  • But that pick should be something the Kings can leverage, along with the second-round selections in some trade flotsam down the road.
    — Chris Biderman, Sacramento Bee, 4 Feb. 2025
  • But that pick should be something the Kings can leverage, along with the second-round selections in some trade flotsam down the road.
    — Zach Harper, The Athletic, 3 Feb. 2025
  • The men were forced to abandon the vessel and build a rudimentary cabin on land from bits of the ship and flotsam scavenged from the shore.
    — Star Tribune, 8 Jan. 2021
  • At the end of the passage, seawater pooled, which meant wading through a mucky pond teeming with driftwood and mystery flotsam.
    — James Rainey, Los Angeles Times, 27 Aug. 2021
  • In other words, an unfettered wide-open search of the Internet on your own is going to bring up all kinds of flotsam.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The writer thinks that the person seducing the main character is just some flotsam, hardly worth a second look.
    — Literary Hub, 26 June 2026
  • This is not the first time the Chinese have threatened the planet with a falling piece of Long March flotsam.
    — Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 4 Nov. 2022
  • The Chicago Park District dispatched crews to clear the beaches and ran out of places to put the foul flotsam.
    — Theodore J. Karamanski, Chicago Tribune, 6 Feb. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'flotsam.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: