state of matter
Americannoun
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states of matter
plural
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One of the four principal conditions in which matter exists—solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.
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See also phase phase transition
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
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.
When atomic nuclei crash into one another at nearly the speed of light, they briefly produce quark-gluon plasma, an extraordinarily hot state of matter in which quarks and gluons can move freely.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 3, 2026
Microsoft's approach to quantum computing is equally strange: it is based on a 90-year-old physics theory and involves a state of matter which is neither liquid, solid nor gas.
From BBC ● Jun. 24, 2026
To do this it had to exploit a novel state of matter - different from the three familiar states of liquid, solid or gas.
From BBC ● Jun. 2, 2026
By carefully arranging tiny particles of silver into custom-built structures, they created and stabilized a previously elusive state of matter that had existed only in theoretical models.
From Science Daily ● May 30, 2026
The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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.
