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.

   • 2013, Robert Slifkin, Out of Time, page 19:

     According to Judd, in his polemical statement of aesthetic purpose "Specific Objects," written the year he created Untitled, the intransigent materiality of his nonallusive objects would provide a "credible" experience for viewers, free from any external connotations.

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

Antonyms

• immateriality
• ethereality