Detritus

in nature, detritus is dead plant and animal matter that makes new life possible. The very bottom of the food chain, detritus is the rotting leaves in the forest, the silt on the bottom of the pond, the thick dark mud in thesalt marsh. It sticks to your shoes, it smells, but someday it will be food for something else, and that something will be food in turn, on and on up the food chain until you pick it up in the supermarket and put it in your mouth.

Our society spends a lot of time telling us that there is some brand new, fresh cultural produce, generated from thin air and sunshine, slick and clean. They package it with pretty plastic & ribbons and then feed it to us. A lot gets thrown away: the ribbons, the wrapping; culture becomes garbage, or it dies, and rots behind the refrigerator. But the new fluffy shiny stuff still gets churned out, and it gets forced between our teeth. And we are told to swallow it.

We will not swallow. We will chew, and then spit. We will play with our food, and create something new and interesting from it.

Born in the mountains of Lancre and suitor of Ruby, Detritus became the first Troll to enter the Nightwatch of Ankh-Morpork under the commando of the then Captain Samuel Vimes. Already known to most discworld readers as a rather dimwitted bouncer, he was admitted to the city's security forces when the Patrician decided that the watch personnel should reflect the ethnic makeup of the city, consisting mainly of humans, dwarfs and their archenemies, the trolls (and later of course Werewolfs, Gnomes, Vampires, Zombies and Golems).

A gentle soul but unfortunately not the brightest during the warm months of the year (due to his silicate brain working better in lower temperatures), he has nevertheless the strength to enforce the law with his Siege bow giving him the playful nickname "one man army".

Detritus makes his first appearance as a watchman in Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms, and is promoted to Sergeant by the time of the war with the Klatchians.

De*tri"tus (?), n. [F. d'etritus, fr. L. detritus, p. p. of deterere. See Detriment.]

1. Geol.

A mass of substances worn off from solid bodies by attrition, and reduced to small portions; as, diluvial detritus.

⇒ For large portions, the word d'ebris is used.

2.

Hence: Any fragments separated from the body to which they belonged; any product of disintegration.

The mass of detritus of which modern languages are composed. Farrar.

© Webster 1913.