Word.ws English Dictionary

materiality

materiality noun: the quality of being material; having a physical existence.

Noun

materiality (countable and uncountable, plural materialities)

  1. The quality of being material; having a physical existence.
    • This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and...1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 29
    • According to Judd, in his polemical statement of aesthetic purpose "Specific Objects," written the year he created Untitled, the intransigent materiality of his nonallusive objects would provide a "credible" experience for viewers, free from any external connotations.2013, Robert Slifkin, Out of Time, page 19
  2. The quality of being of consequence to a legal decision.

materiality meaning in Tamil and Bengali

materiality in Tamil

பொருட்பாடு, பொருட்படுத்தத் தகுமை, கணிசநிலை

materiality in Bengali

বস্তুগত হওয়ার গুণ, ভৌত অস্তিত্ব থাকা

Examples of materiality in a sentence

  • It has a materiality and 'realness' that is, while evolving and shifting, nevertheless concrete and mappable.
  • What does this signify for the materiality and mentality of our everyday life in the hypermodern city?
  • The ear is always open, always supplementing its primary materiality, always multiplying the singularity of perception into the plurality of experience.

All 11 example sentences with materiality

Antonyms of materiality

Forms of materiality

pluralmaterialities

Origin of materiality

From material (adjective and noun) + -ity, perhaps modelled on Latin māteriālitās.

Words formed from materiality

Questions about materiality

What does materiality mean?
Materiality means the quality of being material; having a physical existence.
What is materiality in Tamil?
Materiality in Tamil is பொருட்பாடு, பொருட்படுத்தத் தகுமை, கணிசநிலை. See Materiality meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is materiality?
Materiality is a noun.
What is the plural of materiality?
The plural of materiality is materialities.

Words near materiality in the dictionary

  1. materialistic
  2. materialistical
  3. materialistically
  4. materialists
  5. materialities
  6. materiality
  7. materializable
  8. materialization
  9. materializations
  10. materialize
  11. materialized

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: materiality (page history and authors); materiality (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); materiality (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-materiality.wav.

Cite this entry: “materiality.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/materiality. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.