What does dematerialize mean?
To dematerialize is to cease to have physical form — literally, to vanish into air like a spirit in fiction, and practically, to be converted from something tangible into something purely electronic. The word combines the prefix "de-" with "materialize," so it names the reverse of taking on solid shape. Its dominant modern usage is financial: when shares, bonds, or other securities are dematerialized, their paper certificates are retired and replaced by records in an electronic registry, making trading faster and safer. The word also appears in discussions of technology and culture, where books, photographs, music, and even money are said to dematerialize as they migrate from physical objects to digital files. In science fiction, meanwhile, it retains its older, dramatic sense of an object or person dissolving into nothingness. Formal in register but widely understood, "dematerialize" captures a defining trend of the digital age: the steady replacement of the tangible by the intangible.
verbTo dematerialize is to lose physical form or substance, as if vanishing into thin air; in a figurative or technical sense, it also means to replace a physical object or process with an intangible electronic equivalent.
- (of a physical thing) to lose its material substance and vanish from sight
- (finance) to convert a physical security, such as a paper share certificate, into an electronic record
- (figurative) to become insubstantial, attenuated, or less tangible
"In the science-fiction film, the spaceship dematerialized before the astonished crew's eyes."
"At midnight the ghostly figure seemed to dematerialize into the mist."
"The company dematerialized all of its share certificates, moving them onto a central electronic registry."
Before you can dematerialize your savings, Wall Street has to dematerialize them first — most shares traded today exist only as digital entries, not paper.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dematerialize
Dematerialize is formed from Latin roots: "de-" plus "material," which derives from the Latin "materia" meaning matter or substance. The verb was formed within English by adding "de-" to the earlier verb "materialize," which itself appeared in English in the seventeenth century in senses connected with assuming bodily form. The same Latin root gives English a family of related words including "material," "immaterial," "materialism," and "materiality."
Related word forms
How dematerialize is actually used
The literal sense of physically vanishing belongs chiefly to science fiction and fantasy; in everyday professional use — especially finance — "dematerialize" carries no supernatural connotation at all and simply describes replacing paper documents with electronic records. It is a formal word, rarely used in casual conversation except playfully.
Easily confused with dematerialize
"Rematerialize" means to regain physical form after having vanished, while "dematerialize" means to lose physical form and disappear.