materialism — English Dictionary

Noun

1. Constant concern over material possessions and wealth; a great or excessive regard for worldly concerns.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Synonyms

   hylismhylicism

   Antonyms

   spirituality

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   We accept that a third of the population live on the poverty line. We accept that only a handful of the most exceptional of the children of the poor will make it through to a third-level education. We accept massive examples of greed and dishonesty in public life. We except the values of materialism. What do we expect then—to be left un-harassed, we who have all the privileges?

2. The philosophical belief that nothing exists beyond what is physical.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Uncountable

   Synonyms

   physicalismphilosophical materialismthingismhylismhylicismhylozoism

   Antonyms

   idealism

   Examples

   More examples (3)

   The result of the labours of philosophy appeared to be a total scepticism on the most important subjects of hu man duty and expectation. The irregular fears of a future state had been supplanted by the materialism of Epicurus; and this system—if system it may be called, which left them without a God, a providence, a morality, or a retribution—was the fashionable philosophy of the more cultivated classes.

   Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. ... All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.

   With the rise of Cartesian and Hobbesian mechanical philosophy and materialism in the 16th and 17th centuries, the classical argument for the immateriality of the intellect and will was simply ignored and then forgotten.

3. Synonym of matter, material substances in the aggregate.

   Usage

   • Countable
   • Obsolete
   • Rare
   • Uncountable

Noun

1. a desire for wealth and material possessions with little interest in ethical or spiritual matters

   Synonyms

   philistinism

   Broader terms

   desire

2. (philosophy) the philosophical theory that matter is the only reality

   Synonyms

   physicalism

   Broader terms

   philosophical doctrinephilosophical theory