the.com/flotsam and jetsam

means Flotsam is wreckage that floats free after a shipwreck, and jetsam is cargo deliberately thrown overboard to lighten a sinking ship — together, the odds and ends of disaster, or just miscellaneous junk.

from Both words sailed in from maritime law, where the distinction actually mattered: flotsam, from French 'floter' (to float), meant goods found floating that the original owner could still claim; jetsam, from 'jettison' (itself from Latin 'jactare,' to throw), meant goods deliberately cast overboard, which the sea got to keep. Courts once cared a great deal about which was which, since ownership rights differed. Centuries of casual use fused the pair into one rhyming phrase for any scattered, washed-up miscellany, legal nuance drowned along the way.