[Fr.] The fall of a mass of rock, a building, etc. Used fig.; also spec. in Geol.
1820. H. Matthews, Diary of an Invalid (1835), 288. Napoleon has so catamaranned the foundations, that more than one écroulement has already taken place.
1839. Murchison, Silurian System, I. xiii. 163. The great ‘ecroulement’ of rocks named Daren. Ibid., I. xxxii. 434–5. I found the phenomena to be similar to many ecroulemens of Alpine tracts.
