substance
/ˈsʌbstəns/ noun B2- Physical matter; material.
- A form of matter that has constant chemical composition and characteristic properties.
- The essential part of anything; the most vital part.
- Substantiality; solidity; firmness. · Some textile fabrics have little substance.
- Material possessions; estate; property; resources. · a man of substance
- Drugs (illegal narcotics) · substance abuse
- Ousia, essence; underlying reality or hypostasis in the philosophical sense.
Plural substances
From the library
In quarreling about the shadow we often lose the substance.
Whole days have I passed in these Titanic efforts, considering my labor well repaid if, by night-time I had contrived to carry away a square inch of this hard-bound cement, changed by ages into a substance unyielding as the stones themselves; then to conceal the mass of earth and rubbish I dug up, I was compelled to break through a staircase, and throw the fruits of my labor into the hollow part of it; but the well is now so completely choked up, that I scarcely think it would be possible to add another handful of dust without leading to discovery.
As he said this, the man came towards Edmond, who heard a heavy metallic substance laid down beside him, and at the same moment a cord was fastened round his feet with sudden and painful violence.
Time, which encrusts all physical substances with its mossy mantle, as it invests all things of the mind with forgetfulness, seemed to have respected these signs, which apparently had been made with some degree of regularity, and probably with a definite purpose.
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