Mat

/mæt/ · noun

Meaning

A flat piece of coarse material used for wiping one’s feet, or as a decorative or protective floor covering..

Definitions by Sense

1. A flat piece of coarse material used for wiping one’s feet, or as a decorative or protective floor covering.
2. A small flat piece of material used to protect a surface from anything hot or rough; a coaster.
3. (athletics) A floor pad to protect athletes.
4. A thickly tangled mess.
5. A thin layer of woven, non-woven, or knitted fiber that serves as reinforcement to a material.
6. A thin surface layer; superficial cover.
7. (transitive) To cover, protect or decorate with mats.
8. (intransitive) To form a thick, tangled mess; to interweave into, or like, a mat; to entangle.

Example Sentences

Wipe your feet on the mat before coming in.

They put mats on the table during mealtimes.

The high jumper cleared the bar and landed safely on the mat.

a mat of weeds

But to return to where we left her, I see her still, propped up in a kind of stupor against one of the walls in which this wretched edifice abounds, her long grey greasy hair framing in its cowl of scrofulous mats a face where pallor, languor, hunger, acne, recent dirt, immemorial chagrin and surplus hair seemed to dispute the mastery.

Iceland moss growing in a mat

The fad for blaming all mass extinctions (such as happened at the end of the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs vanished) on impacts of objects from space was extended to the Pleistocene in 2007. That year a group of scientists proposed that the North American extinctions were due to a comet or meteorite impact over the Carolinas, near the beginning of the Younger Dryas event, about 12,900 years ago. The original evidence for this supposed impact was a "black mat" of organic material in many Clovis sites, plus microscopic nano-diamonds in deep-sea cores, and rare Platinum group metals in Greenland ice cores from around 12,900 years ago.

Be careful now to keep the Doors and Windows of your Conservatories well matted

Synonyms for mat

Antonyms for mat

Related Words

Word Forms

• mats
• matting
• matted
• matt

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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