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• mass
  mass

  noun

  a body of coherent matter, usually of indefinite shape and often of considerable size.
• Mass
  Mass

  noun

  the celebration of the Eucharist.
• Mass.
  Mass.

  abbreviation

  Massachusetts.

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mass

¹ American  

[mas] / mæs /

noun

• masses
  plural

1. a body of coherent matter, usually of indefinite shape and often of considerable size.

   a mass of dough.

2. Medicine/Medical, Pathology. an abnormal lump in the body, often in the form of a cyst or tumor.

   The mass they removed was alarmingly large, but the great news is that it was benign.

3. a collection of incoherent particles, parts, or objects regarded as forming one body.

   a mass of sand.

   Synonyms:

   congeries, heap, assemblage

4. aggregate; whole (usually preceded byin the ).

   People, in the mass, mean well.

5. a considerable assemblage, number, or quantity: a mass of troops.

   a mass of errors;

   a mass of troops.

   Synonyms:

   conglomeration, pile, accumulation, collection

6. bulk, size, expanse, or massiveness.

   towers of great mass and strength.

   Synonyms:

   dimension, magnitude

7. Fine Arts.

   1. Painting. an expanse of color or tone that defines form or shape in general outline rather than in detail.

   2. a shape or three-dimensional volume that has or gives the illusion of having weight, density, and bulk.

8. the main body, bulk, or greater part of anything.

   the great mass of American films.

   Synonyms:

   majority

9. Physics. the quantity of matter as determined from its weight or from Newton's second law of motion. m

10. Pharmacology. a preparation of thick, pasty consistency, from which pills are made.

11. the masses, the ordinary or common people as a whole; the working classes or the lower social classes.

    Synonyms:

    plebeians, proletariat

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adjective

1. 1. pertaining to, involving, or affecting a large number of people.

      mass unemployment;

      mass migrations.

   2. affecting a number of people, but more than two and typically a large number: a mass shooting.

      mass murder;

      a mass shooting.

2. participated in or performed by a large number of people, especially together in a group: mass suicide.

   mass demonstrations;

   mass suicide.

3. pertaining to, involving, or characteristic of the mass of the people: a movie designed to appeal to a mass audience.

   the mass mind;

   a movie designed to appeal to a mass audience.

4. reaching or designed to reach a large number of people.

   television, newspapers, and other means of mass communication.

5. done on a large scale or in large quantities.

   mass destruction.

verb (used without object)

• masses,
  present (3rd person singular)
• massed,
  past participle,  past
• massing
  present participle

1. to come together in or form a mass or masses.

   The clouds are massing in the west.

verb (used with object)

• masses,
  present (3rd person singular)
• massed,
  past participle,  past
• massing
  present participle

1. to gather into or dispose in a mass or masses; assemble.

   The houses are massed in blocks.

   Synonyms:

   aggregate, amass, marshal, collect

   Antonyms:

   disperse

Mass ² American  

[mas] / mæs /

noun

1. the celebration of the Eucharist.

2. (sometimes lowercase) a musical setting of certain parts of this service, as the Kyrie eleison, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.

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Mass. ³ American  

abbreviation

1. Massachusetts.

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mass ¹ British  

/ mæs /

noun

1. a large coherent body of matter without a definite shape

2. a collection of the component parts of something

3. a large amount or number, such as a great body of people

4. the main part or majority

   the mass of the people voted against the government's policy

5. in the main; collectively

6. the size of a body; bulk

7. physics a physical quantity expressing the amount of matter in a body. It is a measure of a body's resistance to changes in velocity (inertial mass) and also of the force experienced in a gravitational field (gravitational mass): according to the theory of relativity, inertial and gravitational masses are equal See also inertial mass gravitational mass

8. (in painting, drawing, etc) an area of unified colour, shade, or intensity, usually denoting a solid form or plane

9. pharmacol a pastelike composition of drugs from which pills are made

10. mining an irregular deposit of ore not occurring in veins

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1. done or occurring on a large scale

   mass hysteria

   mass radiography

2. consisting of a mass or large number, esp of people

   a mass meeting

verb

1. to form (people or things) or (of people or things) to join together into a mass

   the crowd massed outside the embassy

Mass. ² British  

abbreviation

1. Massachusetts

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Mass ³ British  

/ mæs, mɑːs /

noun

1. (in the Roman Catholic Church and certain Protestant Churches) the celebration of the Eucharist See also High Mass Low Mass

2. a musical setting of those parts of the Eucharistic service sung by choir or congregation

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mass Scientific  

/ măs /

1. A measure of the amount of matter contained in or constituting a physical body. In classical mechanics, the mass of an object is related to the force required to accelerate it and hence is related to its inertia, and is essential to Newton's laws of motion. Objects that have mass interact with each other through the force of gravity. In Special Relativity, the observed mass of an object is dependent on its velocity with respect to the observer, with higher velocity entailing higher observed mass. Mass is measured in many different units; in most scientific applications, the SI unit of kilogram is used.

2. See Note at weight See also rest energy General Relativity

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Mass ¹ Cultural  

1. In music, a musical setting for the texts used in the Christian Church at the celebration of the Mass, or sacrament of Communion. Most Masses have been written for use in the Roman Catholic Church.

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Mass ² Cultural  

1. The common name in the Roman Catholic Church, and among some members of the Anglican Communion, for the sacrament of Communion.

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mass ³ Cultural  

1. In physics, the property of matter that measures its resistance to acceleration. Roughly, the mass of an object is a measure of the number of atoms in it. The basic unit of measurement for mass is the kilogram. (See Newton's laws of motion; compare weight.)

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Synonym Usage

See size ¹.

Discover More

Many composers have written Masses; among them are Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Josef Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Leonard Bernstein, and Duke Ellington.

In the Middle Ages in England, mass meant a religious feast day in honor of a specific person; thus, “Christ's Mass,” or Christmas, is the feast day of Christ; and Michaelmas is the feast day of the angel Michael.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• massed
  adjective
• unmassed
  adjective
• massedly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• masses
  plural

Participles

• massing
  present
• massed
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• mass
  simple
• masses
  simple
• have massed
  perfect
• has massed
  perfect
• am massing
  progressive
• are massing
  progressive
• is massing
  progressive
• have been massing
  perfect progressive
• has been massing
  perfect progressive

Past

• massed
  simple
• had massed
  perfect
• was massing
  progressive
• were massing
  progressive
• had been massing
  perfect progressive

Future

• will mass
  simple
• will have massed
  perfect
• will be massing
  progressive
• will have been massing
  perfect progressive

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Etymology

Origin of mass¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English masse, from Latin massa “mass,” from Greek mâza “barley cake,” akin to mássein “to knead”

Origin of Mass²

First recorded before 900; Middle English masse, Old English mæsse, from Vulgar Latin messa (unrecorded), from Late Latin missa, feminine of Latin missus “sent,” past participle of mittere “to send, dismiss”; perhaps extracted from a phrase in the service containing a feminine subject and missa est “(it) is sent”

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Explanation

Anything that has weight and shape has mass. In fact, mass is the quality that gives things weight anywhere there's gravity. If you think about mass being about weight and shape, you can see how many of its meanings are related. If something is very big we say it has great mass — or is massive. If we talk about a large group of people, we talk about a mass demonstration or a mass of demonstrators. We refer to poor or common people as the masses — there are a lot of them. Doctors refer to tumors inside our bodies as masses.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

mass Mass Mass. masses massed massing

They do have mass, but it is extraordinarily small, potentially around 10 million times less than the mass of an electron.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2026

The unrest in Germany follows similar youth-led mass protests in France, where more than 320,000 people also demonstrated on Saturday.

From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2026

A mass rally centered on Belgrade’s Slavija Square in March 2025 drew hundreds of thousands in one of the largest protests in modern Serbian history.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026

“We need to pay for our roads and our bridges and our highways. We need to pay for mass transit. You can’t do it if you don’t have the money,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2026

I look at our little mass of people.

From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron

Raman attended Mass at 9 a.m., then chatted with parishioners in English and Spanish and grabbed food from a taco stand set up in the church’s courtyard.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 1, 2026

Residents and local officials gathered on Saturday in a Spanish village near the site of a high-speed train collision that killed at least 69 people for a memorial Mass honouring the victims.

From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2026

The research was led by scientists at the Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute and involved teams working across three continents.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 31, 2026

City Country Beach has since worked with labels including TWP, Balmain and Bulgari on events in places like Grosse Pointe, Mich. and Nantucket, Mass.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026

Father Pinckney began the high Mass at midnight.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

The family put down roots in Burlington, Mass., a Boston suburb.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 2, 2026

Route 6, which, improbably, runs all the way to Provincetown, Mass. I’ve made this drive a dozen times, and it’s the quiet and open spaces that always bring me back.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2026

MIT and Whitehead, both in Cambridge, Mass., share faculty, facilities and research.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026

Minimum lot sizes for new homes in an expensive Boston suburb like Bedford, Mass., range from 25,000 to 60,000 square feet.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 13, 2026

Padre Leo emerges one night from his bedroom to say Mass. His flannel shirt is inside out and buttoned incorrectly.

From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario

Foid, like the rest of incel language, has become something of a reclaimed meme to the wider masses.

From Slate ● Oct. 29, 2026

Their flag-draped coffins were carried through the gathered masses, which included numerous religious figures and a large security presence, AFP images showed.

From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2026

According to the researchers' calculations, their masses are approximately 80 million, 600,000, and 2 million times that of the Sun.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 25, 2026

All of its 22 chart-topping weeks came over the past few years as the masses have pivoted to holiday playlists after Halloween; it’s all but certain to pad its total this December.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2026

He wanted to know if he should join the masses of pioneers settling the “wilds of the West” in Michigan.

From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock

Stefano Utoikamanu streaked through after Isaiya Katoa's superb inside pass cut out George Williams and Kai Pearce-Paul, to the delight of the massed Tongan fans in Perth.

From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026

The nascent animal-protection movement massed to stop them.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 7, 2026

The overall sound is highly dramatic, with massed voices, quaking beats, horses whinnying in the distance, and percussion that evokes the threat of a rattlesnake.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026

Then, thousands of football fans had massed to watch the evening matches.

From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026

He had no idea where he had got his picture of academic life—perhaps from the Dore illustrations of Dante’s Inferno with its massed and radiant angels.

From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck

Tankers are already massing outside the Strait to fill up.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 18, 2026

Many of the fishing boats involved in the December and January massing events were likely part of China's maritime militia, some experts said.

From Barron's ● Mar. 13, 2026

Now troops are massing near the border region, raising concerns that Ethiopia’s long-term ambitions will feed into a long-running conflict with ethnic Tigrayan rebels, who dominate the Ethiopian side of the frontier.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 7, 2026

Then comes the mosquito-like whine of the incoming Russian drones, massing in their hundreds just above the clouds.

From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2025

There was smoke, clatter, mud, and confusion, as if an army were massing for an assault on Chicago.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

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