MATERIAL • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Material

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/mətˈɪriəl/ Listen

noun

Material n. The substance or matter of which anything is made or may be made.

Raw material, any crude, unfinished, or elementary materials that are adapted to use only by processes of skilled labor. Cotton, wool, ore, logs, etc., are raw material.

adjective

Material adj.

Consisting of matter; not spiritual; corporeal; physical; as, material substance or bodies. "The material elements of the universe."

Hence: Pertaining to, or affecting, the physical nature of man, as distinguished from the mental or moral nature; relating to the bodily wants, interests, and comforts; as, material well-being; material comforts.

Of solid or weighty character; not insubstantial; of consequence; not be dispensed with; important; significant. "Discourse, which was always material, never trifling." "I shall, in the account of simple ideas, set down only such as are most material to our present purpose."

(Logic.) Pertaining to the matter, as opposed to the form, of a thing. See Matter.

Material cause. See under Cause.

Material evidence (Law), evidence which conduces to the proof or disproof of a relevant hypothesis.

Synonyms: Corporeal; bodily; important; weighty; momentous; essential.

verb

Material v. t. To form from matter; to materialize. (Obs.)

See images of 'Material'

Etymology of 'Material'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Material" Quotes from Famous Books

... No material for books has, perhaps, a higher claim to antiquity than the skin of the calf or goat tanned soft, and usually dyed red or yellow: the skins were generally connected in lengths, sometimes of a hundred ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... fair liquid tints of blue, and rose, and glorious gold! This period which, in art, began with Giotto and ended with Botticelli, culminated in Fra Angelico, who flooded the world of painting with a heavenly spiritualism not material, and gave his dreams of heaven the colours of the first ...

— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... as those subjects required. This plan of assembling at the end of each book such general observations upon the coast immediately before examined as could not enter conveniently into the narrative, seeming liable to no material objection, I shall follow it here; and conclude this second part of the voyage with a statement of the winds and currents which appear to prevail most generally along the East and North Coasts; adding ...

— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... arrangement of them, in the mere act of placing them in a picture. The world existed for him as something formless which could be cut up into little pictures. He saw no farther than the lines of his frame. The interest of the thing began inside that frame, and what remained outside was merely material. ...

— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... doubtless possesses many resources; but it is not on the productions of Nepaul alone that the European speculator would calculate, but on the rare and precious merchandise of Thibet and the northern provinces of China—such as the miledo, or exquisitely soft material fabricated from the wool of the celebrated shawl-goat, itself a rare and valuable animal; and the chowries or tails of a peculiar species of bullock inhabiting the snowy regions, at present an article ...

— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

More quotes...