materialize

American  

[muh-teer-ee-uh-lahyz] / məˈtɪər i əˌlaɪz /

especially British, materialise

verb (used without object)

materialized, materializing

1. to come into perceptible existence; appear; become actual or real; be realized or carried out.

   Our plans never materialized.

   Synonyms:

   issue, rise, show, emerge

2. to assume material or bodily form; become corporeal.

   The ghost materialized before Hamlet.

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verb (used with object)

materialized, materializing

1. to give material form to; realize.

   This year, she materialized her long-held ambition to go to law school.

2. to invest with material attributes.

   The writer materializes the more abstract ideas with metaphors, making the concepts easier to grasp.

3. to make physically perceptible; cause (a spirit or the like) to appear in bodily form.

4. to render materialistic.

materialize British  

/ məˈtɪərɪəˌlaɪz /

verb

1. (intr) to become fact; actually happen

   our hopes never materialized

2. to invest or become invested with a physical shape or form

3. to cause (a spirit, as of a dead person) to appear in material form or (of a spirit) to appear in such form

4. (intr) to take shape; become tangible

   after hours of discussion, the project finally began to materialize

5. physics to form (material particles) from energy, as in pair production

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Other Word Forms

• materialization noun
• materializer noun
• rematerialize verb
• unmaterialized adjective

Etymology

Origin of materialize

First recorded in 1700–10; material + -ize

Example Sentences

And a hoped-for bump in the fertility rate—the average number of children born to each woman—hasn’t materialized.

From The Wall Street Journal

When losses eventually materialize, as they always do, the scale of intervention required will be larger.

From Barron's

But those demonstrations never materialized, and no boycotts were called.

From Los Angeles Times

If the company maintains its current rapid earnings growth, not just in the next few quarters but beyond the next year or so, the market will assume the AI threat isn’t materializing.

From Barron's

The company has also considered a bankruptcy filing for its Monsanto agriculture business if the settlement didn’t materialize, the Journal reported.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• appear
• emerge
• happen
• occur
• realize
• take place
• turn up
• unfold