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
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
She has a distinctively concrete and practical way with photographs, and so avoids generic documentary techniques such as the vague and slow camera-moves, and the graphic transitions and effects that dematerialize photographs.
From The New Yorker ● May 9, 2016
Portrayed by Sophie Scott and Tobias Beer, these musicians seem to materialize and dematerialize out of some shadowy distance beyond the train’s windows.
From New York Times ● Mar. 12, 2012
“Can’t I?” replied Merlyn, taking up the position always used by philosophers who propose to dematerialize.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
On the eve of a corruption investigation, he dematerialized from a New York street in 1930, perhaps carrying thousands of dollars from checks he’d just had cashed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 21, 2026
As the apparition dematerialized, Guido bid it farewell: “Toodle, Victah, ghost da poils!”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 14, 2022
“And there's no charge for today ...” As I dematerialized, teleporting to the exit coordinates, Ishmael added: “... because the first one's always free.”
From Nature ● Sep. 27, 2016
The lady herself seems strangely dematerialized because, as Lewis observes, “her character is distributed among personifications.”
From Slate ● May 3, 2016
But, as a spirit who can be materialized or dematerialized whenever we please, he will be of the greatest value to us.
From Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences by Stockton, Frank Richard
“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
As for Yeshua, the believed Messiah, he’s a smiling cipher given to dematerializing mid-confab, leaving behind enigmatic pronouncements and baffled followers.
From New York Times ● Feb. 18, 2016
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
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.
