Meaning of substance in English

substance

noun

/ˈsʌb.stəns/ uk

/ˈsʌb.stəns/

substance noun (MATERIAL)

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B2 [ C or U ]

material with particular physical characteristics:

an organic/chemical substance

What sort of substance could withstand those temperatures?

illegal substance formal

an illegal drug:

All athletes are tested for illegal substances.

More examplesFewer examples

a natural substance
This substance is so radioactive that it glows in the dark.
This substance stretches to any shape you want.
Rubber is a flexible substance.
Two days after he'd been exposed to the substance, a painful rash erupted on his neck.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Mixing and mixtures

amalgam
be neither one thing nor the other idiom
blend
blend in/blend into something
blender
blitz
churn
crossed
decoction
emulsion
guaraná
homogeneous mixture
meld
methylate
mingle
mosaic
mush
saturated solution
scramble
synthesis

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Categories and varieties

substance noun (IMPORTANCE)

C2 [ U ]

the most important part of what someone has said or written:

Later that year, the substance of their secret conversation appeared in a newspaper article.

[ U ]

importance, seriousness, or relationship to real facts:

substance in/to There is no substance in/to the allegation.

give substance to This new information gives substance to the stories we have heard.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Important and essential things

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Importance - general words

(Definition of substance from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

substance | Intermediate English

substance

noun

/ˈsʌb·stəns/

substance noun (MATERIAL)

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[ C ]

a material with particular physical characteristics:

The pesticide contains a substance that is toxic to insects.

substance noun (IMPORTANCE)

[ U ]

importance, seriousness, or relationship to real facts:

Surprisingly, these filmmakers opted for substance over style.

(Definition of substance from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of substance

substance

First, a few words on the substance of the deal.

From TIME

People use substances for hundreds of different individual, almost idiosyncratic, reasons.

From Huffington Post

He did not say what the substances were.

From Dallas Morning News

Do we really need to add yet another mind-altering substance to the array?

From International Business Times

Officers arrived and determined to be under the influence of a controlled substance.

From The Mercury News

Thus, it is necessary for this substance to be supplied by the diet.

From Huffington Post

The difference between receiving $1,000 of interest, and eliminating the payment of $1,000 of interest, is one of form but not of substance.

From Huffington Post

And when we're teaching, we want to be about substance.

From Philly.com

Town officials stressed that acceptance of the document is not tantamount to agreeing with the substance of its contents.

From Buffalo News

It needs a harder push to get some viewers to recognize its substance.

From The New Yorker

It tells us that the most dangerous people -- and substances -- in our lives are often the ones we encounter every single day.

From Wired

These children do not need psychoactive substances -- they need the best human, caring services that our society can provide.

From Huffington Post

The lawsuit did not detail the extent of the complaints or their substance.

From The Denver Post

Also, when you're landing on a non-forgiving substance, that's bad.

From NPR

Also, it is difficult to measure the potency of plant-derived substances like pot.

From TIME

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with substance

substance

These are words often used in combination with substance.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

addictive substance

Nicotine is another addictive substance that affects larger numbers of individuals worldwide.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

adolescent substance use

These consistencies with prominent theories of adult alcoholism suggest that some aspects of theories of adult alcoholism may be usefully applied to adolescent substance use.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

banned substance

One would think that it was a banned substance.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

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What is the pronunciation of substance?