Meaning & use
material damage
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountableformal
Physical harm to objects, buildings or other property, as opposed to harm to people.
Grammar: No plural and no article: the storm caused material damage.
Patterns
- material damage to something
- cause material damage
The crash caused only material damage, and nobody was hurt.
The policy covers material damage to the car.
Police reported extensive material damage to shops on the street.
noununcountablelegal
In law, harm to a person's interests that can be measured in money, as distinct from moral harm.
Grammar: Often contrasted with moral damage in court documents.
Patterns
- claim for material damage
The court awarded compensation for material damage but not for emotional distress.
She sued the contractor for material damage to her home.
Material damage must be proved with receipts and estimates.
Common combinations
- cause material damage
- The flooding caused material damage across the valley.
- suffer material damage
- The warehouse suffered material damage in the fire.
- extensive material damage
- The storm left extensive material damage along the coast.
- limited to material damage
- The losses were limited to material damage.
- insurance for material damage
- They took out insurance for material damage to the vehicle.
Synonyms and how they differ
- property damage
- Property damage is the everyday and legal phrase, and it is slightly more common than material damage in American English.
- physical damage
- Physical damage is broader, since it can refer to harm to a body as well as to objects.
- destruction
- Destruction suggests total ruin, whereas material damage can be minor.
Opposites
Word family
- material adjective
- relating to physical things, or important enough to matter
- materially adverb
- in a significant or physical way
- damage verb
- to harm something
- damaging adjective
- causing harm
Commonly confused: material damage or damages?
material damage vs damages
Damages, with a s, means money paid as compensation in a lawsuit, while damage is the harm itself.
Practice
The collision left nobody injured, so the accident report listed only ___.
Choose one answer.
Material damage covers harm to property such as vehicles. Personal injury concerns harm to people, which did not happen here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “material damage”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.