mat

noun

1. 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.”

2. 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.”

3. A floor pad to protect athletes.

   “The high jumper cleared the bar and landed safely on the mat.”

4. A thickly tangled mess.

   “a mat of weeds”

   “But to return to where we left her, I see her still, propped up in a kind of stupor against one of the walls in which this wretched edifice abounds, her long grey greasy hair framing in its cowl of scrofulous mats a face where pallor, languor, hunger, acne, recent dirt, immemorial chagrin and surplus hair seemed to dispute the mastery.”

5. A thin layer of woven, non-woven, or knitted fiber that serves as reinforcement to a material.
6. A thin surface layer; superficial cover.

   “Iceland moss growing in a mat”

7. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, in-plural, slang)Clipping of material.

   “I used up all my mats cranking 90s and ended up getting one-pumped.”

   “Using a Weapon Upgrade Bench, it's possible to upgrade a Common Shotgun, for example, all the way to Legendary provided you've harvested enough mats to do so.”

   “While there are game modes where you can build without any requirements, you'll need to harvest materials to build in normal Fortnite games. Mats is the shortened version of materials.”

   “Fortnite added a new trap with the Armored Wall reinforcement for mats and one viral TikTok showed just how deadly the new item can be in a close fight.”

   “The looper goes on laying more than a thousand mats in thirty seconds. He finally reaches his opponent, who is easily brought down with a shell of a shotgun and a burst of an SMG. Upon eliminating the opponent, he is ecstatic in celebration.”

8. An alloy of copper, tin, iron, etc.; white metal.
9. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of matte (“instrument for producing a dull, lustreless surface”).
10. (abbreviation, alt-of, dated, slang)Abbreviation of matinee (“performance at a theater”).

    “A gents' toilet room might be found in a house that caters for the cheaper class of theatrical patronage, where the slangy language of the "goin' to the mat this aft?" style prevails. A gents toilet room is not found in the Southern Hotel. It either "men's" or "gentlemen's".”

11. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of matte (“decorative border around a picture”).

    “the mat of a daguerreotype”

12. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping)Clipping of matrix.
13. (uncountable)Vulgar, obscene, or profane language in Russian and some other Slavic language communities.

    “Most teenagers go through times when they use mat "rather heavily" among themselves. I guess they associate it with being adults. In most cases though this goes away pretty fast, usually when they start dating girls. Using mat rather heavily after graduating from university is a differnet^([sic]) matter.”

    “Don't you people have anything better to do than collecting mat. I still can't undestand why people in (and from) the ex-USSR like to swear so much.”

    “As the Russian mentality (hopefully) will be less medieval, mat will lose its social role. It will be less frequently used in the spoken language. From the other hand, books will lose its medieval sacrality, and mat will be allowed to be printed.”

14. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of medication-assisted treatment.
15. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of Master of Arts in Teaching.

verb

1. (transitive)To cover, protect or decorate with mats.

   “Be careful now to keep the Doors and Windows of your Conservatories well matted”

2. (intransitive)To form a thick, tangled mess; to interweave into, or like, a mat; to entangle.

   “And o'er his eyebrows hung his matted hair.”

3. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of matte (“to produce a dull, lustreless surface on metal”).

adj

1. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative form of matte (“not reflecting light”).

   “Frons mat black, orbits slightly paler, more greyish; mesonotum distinctly mat, greyish-black, but with some subshine; […]”

name

1. A diminutive of the male given name Matthew.
2. (Singapore, ethnic, slur)a Malay man