Other forms: matters, mattered
To matter is to be important. It does not matter, does it matter, nothing else matters.
It is used far more in the negative and in questions than in the positive: it matters is possible but rarer than it does not matter. As a noun, a matter is a subject or situation — the matter in hand, a serious matter — and matter is also physical substance: solid matter, dark matter. Note what is the matter, meaning what is wrong; as a matter of fact; and no matter, meaning it makes no difference.
1verbmatterTo be important.~2%
“It did not matter to anybody except the four people involved.”
2nounsubjectA subject or situation.~33%
“We discussed the matter at the meeting but couldn't agree.”
3nounphysicalPhysical substance.~65%
“About a quarter of the universe appears to be dark matter.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Latin materia meant timber or building material, from mater, a mother — the tree that produces shoots. The word for physical substance is literally the mother-stuff, and matter meaning a subject came from the material of a discussion.
Middle English
matere
English, today
matter
Built from
From Middle English matere. From Middle English matere, mater, from Anglo-Norman materie, from Old French materie, from Latin māteria (“wood”), from māter (“mother”), in which case cognate with xcl մայր (“cedar”) and մայրի (“forest”). a doublet of Madeira and mata and mater and matrix and mother. andweorc, from Old English andweorc (“matter, substance, material”), Old English intinga (“matter, affair, business”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA