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

Plans by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to carry out a live-fire military drill Sunday and Monday in the strategic Strait of Hormuz failed to materialize.

From The Wall Street Journal

The global “retaliation” against American products that so many pundits predicted last April never materialized—just the opposite.

From The Wall Street Journal

The sales upside in China may take years to materialize, while earnings dilution could show up sooner.

From Barron's

Microsoft maintains an incumbent advantage in the application layer of the AI stack, but the monetization will take longer to materialize, Zelnick added.

From MarketWatch

“Usually,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, “guys take those shorter-term deals because a longer-term deal hasn’t materialized.”

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

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