material – English noun declension

English noun forms of material

Noun: material
Singularmaterial
Pluralmaterials

Sample Sentences

  • 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:]
  • 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 26, Lee A. Groat, “Gemstones”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 128:]
  • boy/girlfriend material
  • marriage material
  • 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:]
  • 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:]
  • teaching materials
  • We were a warm-up act at the time; we didn't have enough original material to headline.
  • 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:]
  • a piece of material
  • You'll need about a yard of material to make this.
  • 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 solid materials of the mixture will settle to the bottom of the container.
  • The material of his character was basically good.
  • […] 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:]

Etymology

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. See: Middle English Nouns 'material', Latin Nouns 'māteria'.