antimatter
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of antimatter
Explanation
Antimatter is composed of antiparticles, which have the opposite charge of regular particles. Antimatter is also called negative matter. Matter makes up all the things that exist: everything in the world is matter. Words beginning with anti are opposed to their root. Therefore, antimatter is the opposite of matter. If antimatter and matter were to collide, both would be destroyed, releasing a huge and dangerous amount of energy. This happens because the particles that make up matter and the antiparticles that make up antimatter have opposite electric charges. The existence of antimatter is something studied by physicists.
Vocabulary lists containing antimatter
Power Prefix: Anti
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Zilch, Zip, Nada: Words For Nothing
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Quantum of Vocabulary: the Parlance of Particle Physics
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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.
"As a physicist I find it fascinating that a huge question, like why there's matter in the universe instead of antimatter, can be broken down into smaller, step-by-step questions," said Messier.
From Science Daily • Mar. 3, 2026
The project is designed to look for an extremely rare event in which muonium, a short lived system made of a positive muon bound to an electron, spontaneously transforms into antimuonium, its antimatter counterpart.
From Science Daily • Feb. 2, 2026
I think of this book as the antimatter to JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 12, 2025
These very massive, elusive particles then decayed into lighter, more stable particles with a slight preference for matter over antimatter.
From Science Daily • Dec. 7, 2025
In other words, life would be just the same for the inhabitants of another planet who were both mirror images of us and who were made of antimatter, rather than matter.
From "A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays" by Stephen Hawking
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.
