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.
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
Last January, the temperatures were less frightening than Death Valley’s summertime triple-digits, and it was then I decided to visit, assured that I would neither melt nor dematerialize.
From New York Times • Oct. 28, 2011
“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
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.
