Emily Dickinson Lexicon

MA-TE'RI-AL-ISM, n.

1. The doctrine of materialists; the opinion of those who maintain that the soul of man is not a spiritual substance distinct from matter, but that it is the result or effect of the organization of matter in the body. The irregular fears of a future state had been supplanted by the materialism of Epicurus. Buckminster.
2. Matter; material substances in the aggregate. [Unusual.] Chalmers.