materialize meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

materialize

verb

/məˈtɪɹiəlaɪz/

Etymology From material + -ize.

British, English, Oxford, US To cause to take physical form, or to cause an object to appear.

British, English, Oxford, US To take physical form, to appear seemingly from nowhere.

a spirit form, temporarily materialized, and undistinguishable from a human being in the flesh, has come forth in the light[…]1875, Epes Sargent, The Proof Palpable of Immortality:
Don’t you find, that things fail to materialize? Nothing materializes! Everything withers in the bud.1920, D.H. Lawrence, chapter 1, in Women in Love:

2 more examples

Perhaps every five minutes each person ceases to exist and is fissed, with one descendant instantly replacing the original and the other materializing on a twin Earth somewhere […]1998, Richard Hanley, Is Data Human?:
And the citationality of these acts—and the calibration of such citationalities to each other—materializes as the very media forms in question.2016, Constantine V. Nakassis, Doing Style: Youth and Mass Mediation in South India, page 230:

British, English, Oxford, US To become real (of a plan, idea, etc.); to come to fruition.

British, English, Oxford, US To regard as matter; to consider or explain by the laws or principles which are appropriate to matter.

Computing, Databases, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Sciences British, English, Oxford, US To perform materialization; to save the results of a database query as a temporary table or materialized view.

Derived terms: dematerialize, materializable, materializer, rematerialize, unmaterialized