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say it: MAT-ur
matter is a noun and verb meaning "a vaguely specified concern". It carries 7 recorded senses.
some situation or event that is thought about
“he kept drifting off the topic”
“he had been thinking about the subject for several years”
“it is a matter for the police”
that which has mass and occupies space
“physicists study both the nature of matter and the forces which govern it”
(used with negation) having consequence
“they were friends and it was no matter who won the games”
written works (especially in books or magazines)
“he always took some reading matter with him on the plane”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for matter come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.