material witness

1. 1.

   a witness whose testimony is both relevant to the matter at issue and required in order to resolve the matter

   Broaderwitness

Questions about material witness

What does material witness mean?

material witness means "a witness whose testimony is both relevant to the matter at issue and required in order to resolve the matter".

Is material witness a common word?

material witness is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.