material
nounEtymology From Middle English material, from Late Latin māteriālis, from Latin māteria (“wood, material, substance”), from māter (“mother”). Displaced native Middle English andweorc, andwork (“material, matter”) (from Old English andweorc (“matter, substance, material”)). Doublet of materiel.
11 senses
- 1A basic matter (as metal, wood, plastic, fiber, etc.)…
- 2A person, or people collectively, who are qualified or…
- 3Apparatus for doing or making something.
- 4Something (as data, observations, perceptions or ideas)…
- 5Fabric, which can be made into a garments, curtains…
- 6The elements, constituents or substance of which…
- 7An element of a design language associated with a…
- 8All of a player's pieces and pawns on the chessboard…
- 9The ingredients for making whisky punch.
- 10The materiel of an army.
- 11Things that are material.
A basic matter (as metal, wood, plastic, fiber, etc.) from which the whole or the greater part of something physical (as a machine, tool, building, fabric, etc.) is made.
- Asphalt, composed of oil and sand, is a widely used material for roads.
- In trumpets for assisting the hearing, all reverbation of the trumpet must be avoided. It must be made thick, of the least elastic materials, and covered with cloth externally. For all reverbation lasts for a short time, and produces new sounds which mix with those which are coming in.1820, Encyclopaedia Britannica; Or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 6th edition, volume 20, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company, page 501:
1 more example
- Although there are dozens of different types of gems, among the best known and most important are […] . (Common gem materials not addressed in this article include amber, amethyst, chalcedony, garnet, lazurite, malachite, opals, peridot, rhodonite, spinel, tourmaline, turquoise and zircon.)2012 March 23, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 128:
Collective, Sometimes A person, or people collectively, who are qualified or suited for a certain position or activity.
Preceded by a qualifying word
- boy/girlfriend material
- marriage material
2 more examples
- We have lots of presidential material in various public offices.
- Before she married her husband, Kiersten Little considered him ideal father material.2021 November 20, Alex Williams, “To Breed or Not to Breed?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
Usually Apparatus for doing or making something.
- Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted]”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:
Something (as data, observations, perceptions or ideas) that may be incorporated, elaborated or otherwise reworked into a finished form or new form, or may serve as the basis for arriving at interpretations, judgments or conclusions.
- teaching materials
- We were a warm-up act at the time; we didn't have enough original material to headline.
1 more example
- With fresh material, taxonomic conclusions are leavened by recognition that the material examined reflects the site it occupied; a herbarium packet gives one only a small fraction of the data desirable for sound conclusions. Herbarium material does not, indeed, allow one to extrapolate safely: what you see is what you get[…]1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii:
Fabric, which can be made into a garments, curtains, etc; especially, woven fabric (cloth).
- a piece of material
- You'll need about a yard of material to make this.
1 more example
- Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days. There was a great deal of them, lavish both in material and in workmanship.1977, Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, part II, London: Collins, →ISBN, page 4:
The elements, constituents or substance of which something physical or non-physical composed of or can be made of.
- The solid materials of the mixture will settle to the bottom of the container.
- The material of his character was basically good.
2 more examples
- […] I beleeve that as they ſay of the materialls of the world, they would ſoone diſolve if the ſoule of it were taken away […]1642, Daniel Rogers […], Naaman the Syrian, his Disease and Cvre, London: Th. Harper for Philip Nevil, unnumbered page:
- As we age, the major arteries of our bodies frequently become thickened with plaque, a fatty material with an oatmeal-like consistency that builds up along the inner lining of blood vessels.2013 July-August, Stephen P. Lownie, David M. Pelz, “Stents to Prevent Stroke”, in American Scientist:
Computing, Engineering, Graphical user interface, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences An element of a design language associated with a certain style of rendering on the display.
Board games, Chess, Games All of a player's pieces and pawns on the chessboard, excluding the king.
Rare The materiel of an army.
Obsolete Things that are material.
- Synonyms
- material
- Derived terms
63 terms
active material, antimaterial, archaeomaterial, archeomaterial, astromaterial, bill of material, bimaterial, biomaterial, bomb material, building material, child sexual abuse material, collateral material, composite material, cryptomaterial, ecomaterial, genetic material, genuine issue of material fact, geomaterial, hazardous material, hazmat, Kelvin-Voigt material, material action, material conditional, material culture, material fact, material handling, material heresy, material implication, materialisation, materialise, materialism, materialist, materialization, materialize, material logic, materially, materialness, material noun, material science, materials science, material support, material witness, metamaterial, micromaterial, multimaterial, nanomaterial, non-material, nonmaterial, positive material identification, postmaterial, postmaterialism, postmaterialist, raw material, reading material, shawl material, sociomaterial, source material, strategic material, supermaterial, time and material, tissue equivalent material, trimaterial, Voigt material- Related terms
- matter, materiel, substantial, for material's use as an adjective
- Hyponyms
- adobe, brick, cement, chemical substance, clay, composite, concrete, fabric, glass, metal, mortar, paper, plastic, stone, wood
- Holonyms
- artifact