dematerialize
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
-
to cease to have material existence, as in science fiction or spiritualism
-
to disappear without trace; vanish
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of dematerialize
First recorded in 1880–85; de- + materialize
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 lively canvas, hardly an illustration of an event, employs light-reflective silver and golden-brown metallic paints applied in vast fields of paisley-like commas that dematerialize into a spatially ambiguous surface shimmer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2024
There is no insistence in Tanowitz’s work; its beauties flower and dematerialize before your eyes.
From New York Times ● Feb. 5, 2023
The only thing more devastating than the abrupt disappearance of one parent is watching another dematerialize in slow-motion.
From Washington Post ● May 27, 2021
Restaurants have had it rough in South Lake Union, where Amazon workers love lunch and can get behind a happy hour, but tend to dematerialize at dinnertime.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 22, 2020
The guy was so quiet and brooding, he almost seemed to dematerialize when he wasn’t speaking.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
In fact, the waterfront dining room and the meticulously prepared tasting menu have already dematerialized.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 17, 2022
As the apparition dematerialized, Guido bid it farewell: “Toodle, Victah, ghost da poils!”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 14, 2022
He talks about the meditative appeal of throwing clay, and about the particular pleasure, for someone who works in the increasingly dematerialized “content” industry, of a creative endeavor oriented around tactile artifacts.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2021
It seemed like Wanda’s kids were dematerialized along with Vision, but those voices calling for help sound awfully familiar.
From Slate ● Mar. 5, 2021
I don't think that we'd be dematerialized, either, because the situation would give him something more to think about for another thousand cycles; and thinking seemed to be his main object in life.
From Skylark Three by Hans Waldemar Wessolowski
“Interior walls are dematerializing, with rooms defined by glass doors or columns or completely open to each other.”
From Washington Post ● Feb. 15, 2017
The way the light reflects off the metallic columns is pleasing but also helps them blend in with their surroundings, an effect Ramsey calls "dematerializing."
From The Verge ● Feb. 28, 2016
And the dematerializing impulse was an international phenomenon, as the visually airy sampler “Open Work in Latin America, New York & Beyond: Conceptualism Reconsidered, 1967-1978” makes clear.
From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2013
What all these stores have in common is a firm belief in the book as art, at a time when the form of the book itself is dematerializing into the digital at a rapid clip.
From New York Times ● Aug. 16, 2012
“Of course not. Ridge will be dematerializing in front of our very eyes. According to him, at least. Not exactly the kind of thing Beejee needs to see.”
From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly
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