verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To cause to take physical form, or to cause an object to appear. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive
2. 2
   come into being; become reality wordnet
3. 3
   To take physical form, to appear seemingly from nowhere. British, English, Oxford, US, intransitive

   "a spirit form, temporarily materialized, and undistinguishable from a human being in the flesh, has come forth in the light[…]"

4. 4
   To become real (of a plan, idea, etc.); to come to fruition. British, English, Oxford, US, intransitive
5. 5
   To regard as matter; to consider or explain by the laws or principles which are appropriate to matter. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive

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6. 6
   To perform materialization; to save the results of a database query as a temporary table or materialized view. British, English, Oxford, US, transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms

appearemergehappenperformaffectapproach

Antonyms

All antonyms

dematerialize

Example

More examples

"Tom's plans failed to materialize."

Etymology

From material + -ize.

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