mat.
A flat piece of coarse material used for wiping one’s feet, or as a decorative or protective floor covering.
Meaning & usage
A flat piece of coarse material used for wiping one’s feet, or as a decorative or protective floor covering.
Wipe your feet on the mat before coming in.
A small flat piece of material used to protect a surface from anything hot or rough; a coaster.
They put mats on the table during mealtimes.
A floor pad to protect athletes.
The high jumper cleared the bar and landed safely on the mat.
A thickly tangled mess.
a mat of weeds
A thin layer of woven, non-woven, or knitted fiber that serves as reinforcement to a material.
A thin surface layer; superficial cover.
Iceland moss growing in a mat
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Old English meatte Middle English matte English mat Inherited from Middle English matte (“mat”), from Old English meatte (“mat”), from Late Latin matta (“mat made of rushes”), from Punic or Phoenician (compare Hebrew מיטה \ מִטָּה (mitá, “bed, couch”)). Cognate with German Matte (“mat”), Danish måtte (“mat”), Faroese and Icelandic motta (“rug, mat”), Norwegian matte (“mat, rug”), Swedish matta (“carpet, rug, mat”).
To cover, protect or decorate with mats.
To form a thick, tangled mess; to interweave into, or like, a mat; to entangle.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Old English meatte Middle English matte English mat Inherited from Middle English matte (“mat”), from Old English meatte (“mat”), from Late Latin matta (“mat made of rushes”), from Punic or Phoenician (compare Hebrew מיטה \ מִטָּה (mitá, “bed, couch”)). Cognate with German Matte (“mat”), Danish måtte (“mat”), Faroese and Icelandic motta (“rug, mat”), Norwegian matte (“mat, rug”), Swedish matta (“carpet, rug, mat”).
An alloy of copper, tin, iron, etc.; white metal.
Alternative form of matte (“instrument for producing a dull, lustreless surface”).
Where this word comes from
Compare matte.
Vulgar, obscene, or profane language in Russian and some other Slavic language communities.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Russian мат (mat), abbreviated from the expression ма́терная брань (máternaja branʹ), ultimately from мать (matʹ, “mother”).
Clipping of material.
I used up all my mats cranking 90s and ended up getting one-pumped.
Alternative form of matte (“to produce a dull, lustreless surface on metal”).
Where this word comes from
Compare matte.
Abbreviation of matinee (“performance at a theater”).
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree French matinée English matineeclip. English mat A clipped form of matinee.
Alternative spelling of matte (“decorative border around a picture”).
the mat of a daguerreotype
Alternative form of matte (“not reflecting light”).
Clipping of matrix.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.