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This Adventure in Etymology uncovers the maternal and woody roots of the words material and matter.

Meanings of material include:

• A basic matter from which the whole or the greater part of something physical is made.
• Fabric, which can be made into a garments, etc, especially, woven fabric.
• The elements, constituents or substance of which something is composed of or can be made of.

It comes from Middle English material (material, worldly), from Latin māteriālis (material – made of matter), from māteria (matter, material, substance, timber), from māter (mother, matron, woman), from PIE *méh₂tēr (mother) [source].

Words from the same roots include mattter, maternal, matrix, and mother in English, madre (mother) in Italian, matière (material, matter, subject) in French, madeira (wood) in Portuguese, motër (sister) in Albanian, and modryb (aunt) in Welsh [source].

Incidentally, in Old and Middle English, one word for material (and matter) was andweorc, which comes from and- (against, back, fully), and weorc (work, labour, pain) [source].

This is partially related to the Modern English word handiwork, which comes from Old English handġeweorc (manual labour, something made with the hands) [source].

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I also write about words, etymology and other language-related topics on the Omniglot Blog, and I explore etymological connections between Celtic languages on the Celtiadur blog.