Meaning of material in English

material

noun

/məˈtɪə.ri.əl/ us

/məˈtɪr.i.əl/

material noun (PHYSICAL SUBSTANCE)

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B2 [ C ]

a physical substance that things can be made from:

building material They are using low-impact building materials, such as reclaimed brick and stone.

construction material The company has been plagued by a high turnover of project managers, poor oversight of subcontractors, and the use of second-grade construction materials.

raw material Crude oil is used as the raw (= basic) material for making plastics.

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The meteorites contained only inorganic material.
Clay is a very plastic material.
Uranium is a radioactive material.
The regular incorporation of organic material into garden soil improves its quality enormously.
Prices of goods are governed by the cost of the raw materials, as well as by the cost of production and distribution.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Physics: the state of matter

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material noun (INFORMATION)

B1 [ C or U ]

information used when writing something such as a book, or information produced in various forms to help people or to advertise products:

collect material I'm in the process of collecting material for an article that I'm writing.

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These documents contain classified material.
The latest promotional material is all part of a recruitment drive.
All our advertising material is designed in-house.
I've listed some useful reading material on the handout.
His latest book is a reworking of material from his previous short stories.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Information and messages

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material noun (CLOTH)

B1 [ C or U ]

cloth that can be used to make things such as clothes:

How much material will you need to make the skirt?

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A lot of sportswear is made of very elastic material.
She dipped the material into the dye.
It's a dark grey material but it's flecked with white.
We could use the rest of the material to make up some curtains.
I'm trying to match up this wallpaper with some suitable curtain material.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Textiles: general words

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material noun (EQUIPMENT)

materials B1 [ plural ]

equipment that you need for a particular activity:

"Do we need any writing materials?" "Only a pen and a pencil."

material

adjective

/məˈtɪə.ri.əl/ us

/məˈtɪr.i.əl/

material adjective (PHYSICAL)

relating to physical objects or money rather than emotions or the spiritual world:

the material world Many religions and spiritual traditions encourage us to free ourselves from the material world.

material wealth Material wealth never interested her.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Physics: the state of matter

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material adjective (IMPORTANT)

formal

important or having an important effect:

material to If you have any information that is material to the investigation, you should state it now.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Very important or urgent

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(Definition of material from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

material | American Dictionary

material

noun

/məˈtɪr·i·əl/

material noun (PHYSICAL THING)

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[ C ]

a type of physical thing, such as wood, stone, or plastic, having qualities that allow it to be used to make other things:

a hard/soft material

The sculpture was made of various materials, including steel, copper wire, and rubber.

material noun (CLOTH)

[ C/U ]

cloth that can be used to make clothes, curtains, etc.:

[ U ] What kind of material are you going to use for the curtains?

material noun (SUPPLIES)

[ C/U ]

equipment or supplies needed for a particular activity:

[ C usually pl ] The money will be spent on educational materials.

material noun (INFORMATION)

[ C/U ]

information used when writing something such as a book, or information produced to help people or to advertise products:

[ U ] He is working in the library gathering material for the article he is writing.

(Definition of material from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

material | Business English

material

noun

/məˈtɪəriəl/ us

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[ C or U ]

a physical substance that things can be made from:

The cost of labour and materials has risen up to 40% in a short period.

building/construction materials The buildings also use recycled building materials and consume less water.

traditional/natural/recycled materials There is increasing demand for products made from recycled materials.

hazardous/toxic/radioactive material

[ U or plural ]

printed documents, books, computer programs, etc. that give information, especially ones intended for a particular purpose:

publicity/marketing/promotional material According to their publicity material, the new rates are the lowest in the UK.

teaching/training materials The video and other training materials were created in-house.

printed/published material Some people prefer to receive information face-to-face, rather than through published material.

[ U ]

information used when writing something:

She gave me a lot of useful material for my presentation.

The journalist had been collecting material for an article on the President.

Examples of material

material

They exercise political and military power over peripheries and enjoy a net surplus in the flow of materials or labor vital to core interests.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Local craftsmen still know the ritual, economic, political and environmental restrictions that were traditionally applied to certain of these valuable raw materials.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Managing and analyzing qualitative data : a description of tasks, techniques and materials.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, this does not necessarily imply large-scale disturbance of cultural materials.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Second, did all of the materials that contained sak lu'um contain palygorskite?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

More materials are finally added to table 1 making it more useful for people working with second-order nonlinear effects.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The materials presented here were collected using the methods of the ethnography of communication.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The following is necessarily a tentative interpretation of the materials.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Though the book does not address aesthetic issues directly, the materials certainly hold aesthetic implications.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

They were never observed feeding on the host egg, on the leaf, or on other materials on the leaf.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The former is designed to be used with electronically presented materials while the latter with real objects.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Their short-term retention of verbal materials seems to be comparable to that of average readers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The scarcity of materials on women living in frontier regions makes it harder to retrieve either personal or communal memories.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To examine if the nonnative speakers' results can be attributed to frequency and word-length differences in the materials, a reanalysis of the data was done.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

After fire, the transects were remeasured to quantify residual plant materials that were not consumed.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with material

material

These are words often used in combination with material.

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access material

This would enable interested students to access material more easily without overwhelming the narrative.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

additional material

In a few places the arguments would have been strengthened by use of additional material.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

advanced material

The author has presented experimental results in some of the more advanced material which is useful to understand practical performance and trade-offs of the various algorithms.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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What is the pronunciation of material?

Translations of material

in Chinese (Traditional)

物質／材料, 材料，原料, 資訊…

in Chinese (Simplified)

物质／材料, 材料，原料, 信息…

in Spanish

material, tela, material [masculine…

in Portuguese

material, matéria, tecido…

in more languages

in Marathi

in Japanese

in Turkish

in French

in Catalan

in Dutch

in Tamil

in Hindi

in Gujarati

in Danish

in Swedish

in Malay

in German

in Norwegian

in Urdu

in Ukrainian

in Telugu

in Bengali

in Czech

in Indonesian

in Thai

in Vietnamese

in Polish

in Korean

in Italian

पदार्थ, माल, साहित्य…

（服などの）生地, 資料, 材料…

madde, malzeme, kumaş…

tissu [masculine], étoffe [feminine], matériau [masculine]…

teixit, material…

materiaal, stof, materieel…

பொருட்களை உருவாக்கக்கூடிய ஒரு உடல் பொருள், ஒரு புத்தகம் போன்ற ஏதாவது எழுதும் போது பயன்படுத்தப்படும் தகவல்கள், அல்லது மக்களுக்கு உதவ அல்லது தயாரிப்புகளை விளம்பரப்படுத்த பல்வேறு வடிவங்களில் தயாரிக்கப்பட்ட தகவல்கள்…

(कुछ चीज़ों को बनाने के लिए) सामग्री, (पुस्तक लिखने या विज्ञापन के लिए संचित सामग्री) जानकारी, (पोशाक बनानी के लिए) कपड़ा…

સામગ્રી (કંઈક બનાવવા માટે), સામગ્રી, કાપડ…

materiale, stof, stoflig…

material, tyg, materiell…

bahan, kain, zat…

das Material, der Stoff, materiell…