Materialist

//məˈtiːɹɪəlɪst// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone who is materialistic, concerned only with material possessions.

    "Ironically, today's generation has become the little materialists and "fame whores" (New York Magazine's term) their boomer parents so reviled."

  2. 2
    someone who thinks that nothing exists but physical matter wordnet
  3. 3
    A follower or proponent of philosophical materialism.

    "It is weary work enough to argue with an ordinary materialist, who hurls statistics and whole strata of geological facts at your head, whilst you can only buffet him with deductions and instincts and the snowflakes of faith, that are, alas! so apt to melt in the hot embers of our troubles."

  4. 4
    someone with great regard for material possessions wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Having features typical of philosophical materialism.

Example

More examples

"We should read the following, excerpted from "Espero Katolika" (January 1921), about the 7th Congress of Catholic Esperantists: "During that congress in Graz, we will have to found a very strong international army against the powers of blind revolution, against materialist Bolshevism, dangerous anarchism, the anti-ecclesiastic action of the Freemasons, etc..." So the Catholics are already using Esperanto to oppose our activity, to prevent our liberation."

Etymology

From material + -ist.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.