materiality

English

Etymology

From material (adjective and noun) +‎ -ity, perhaps modelled on Latin māteriālitās.

Noun

materiality (countable and uncountable, plural materialities)

1. The quality of being material; having a physical existence.
   • 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 29:

     This deed accomplished, life no longer suffers hopelessly under the terrible mutilations of ubiquitous disaster, battered by time, hideous throughout space; but with its horror visible still, its cries of anguish still tumultuous, it becomes penetrated by an all-suffusing, all-sustaining love, and a knowledge of its own unconquered power. Something of the light that blazes invisible within the abysses of its normally opaque materiality breaks forth, with an increasing uproar.

2. (law) The quality of being of consequence to a legal decision.

Antonyms

• immateriality
• ethereality