noun
-
the state or quality of being physical or material
-
substance; matter
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of materiality
From the Medieval Latin word māteriālitās, dating back to 1520–30. See material, -ity
Explanation
Materiality is the quality of a physical substance that you can actually feel. Seeing a fluffy beanbag chair online is one thing, but in-person, you can appreciate its materiality. Materiality is a complicated word with several definitions. One way to think of it is as "the quality of consisting of matter." Architects talk about the materiality of actual buildings constructed with materials (rather than images rendered on a computer). When anthropologists discuss the materiality of artifacts, they're talking about their physical properties. In law, on the other hand, materiality means "relevance" or "importance" — in other words, how much something matters.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The artist’s eponymous 2025 sculpture, crowned with an array of Bantu knots, ties the entire show together, joining materiality, traditional cultural identity, and the outward-looking nature of the exhibition in a single work.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
In recent years, the centre has commissioned fourteen exhibitions by diverse international artists - including Adham Faramawy, Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye and Abi Palmer - which have explored themes from climate crisis to materiality.
From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2025
Alys and Helaena fulfill their truest purpose outside the confines of mind and materiality, using the heart tree of Harrenhal's godswood.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2024
Now, materiality in general is the principal through-line defining hugely diverse work made by the show’s 39 artists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2023
To believe in Nature, in its self-existence, its self-subsistence, its self-action, its eternity, infinity, and materiality, and in that only, is Affirmative Atheism.*
From The Limits Of Atheism Or, Why should Sceptics be Outlaws? by Holyoake, George Jacob
There is something about an empty room, empty except of memories, but containing nothing besides, no materialities, no certainties as to the future, which is intimidating to one who stops and thinks.
From By the Light of the Soul A Novel by Brett, Harold M.
This very mental heaviness, holding him down to materialities, kept his contemplation of contingencies from becoming bewildering.
From Never-Fail Blake by Stringer, Arthur
What this country longs for is personalities, grand persons, to counteract its materialities.
From Ralph Waldo Emerson by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
His clothes were a necessary envelope, to which he paid not the slightest attention, for his eyes looked too high among the clouds to concern themselves with such materialities.
From A Daughter of Eve by Balzac, Honoré de
The arc of descent ends in materialities, and the arc of ascent ends in spiritualities.
From Some Answered Questions by `Abdu'l-Bahá
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
