the aggregate of things used or needed in any business, undertaking, or operation (distinguished from personnel).
Military. arms, ammunition, and equipment in general.
From French, dating back to 1805–15; see origin at material
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But some of the cards may unintentionally tip the hand of states that have tried to be opaque about the matériel they are sending.
From New York Times • Mar. 28, 2023
Those wars have often turned, perhaps more than any other factor, on industrial attrition, as each side strains to maintain the flow of matériel like tanks and antiaircraft munitions that keep it in the fight.
From New York Times • Jan. 16, 2023
Japan had lost more than 30,000 of its most experienced ground troops and fliers, and a heavy toll in ships, planes and irreplaceable matériel.
From New York Times • Nov. 13, 2022
Japan, which has forsworn combat since the end of World War II, had not sent military matériel to another country in the midst of fighting a war in more than 75 years.
From New York Times • Apr. 11, 2022
His list of matériel liberated from the Union Army during the 1862 Shenandoah campaign included “six handkerchiefs, two and three quarter dozen neckties, and one bottle of red ink.”
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
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.
