raw material

noun

: crude or processed material that can be converted by manufacture, processing, or combination into a new and useful product

Wheat … is raw material for the flour mill …

—C. A. Koepke

broadly : something with a potential for improvement, development, or elaboration

… perplexities are often the raw material of discoveries.

—Agnes M. Clerke

Synonyms of raw material

• potential
• material

Examples of raw material in a Sentence

His experiences during the war were the raw material for the story.

Recent Examples on the Web

The shift was driven by a fall in fuel imports and a rise in the exports of crude oil and raw materials. — Alexander Onukwue, semafor.com, 9 Sep. 2026

Facilitating rapid response to shifting market signals, Brandix has built a production ecosystem that goes from raw materials to retail-ready garments, centralizing capabilities for agility. — Fairchild Studio, Footwear News, 9 Sep. 2026

Your best FinOps practitioners’ instincts are the raw material for this next wave, and the organizations that pull ahead will capture that expertise as policy an agent can act on, rather than leaving it locked in a few people’s heads. — Devendra Rajput, Forbes.com, 8 Sep. 2026

Meanwhile, China’s demand for raw materials and intermediate goods would dry up, hitting commodity-exporting economies and other developing countries that depend on China as a top trading partner. — Jason Ma, Fortune, 6 Sep. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1612, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for raw material

• arterial
• bacterial
• ethereal
• funereal
• imperial
• sidereal
• venereal
• antibacterial
• biomaterial
• mycobacterial
• cereal
• virial

Kids Definition

raw material

noun

: something from which a useful or desirable product can be manufactured or produced

wheat and rye are the raw materials for a flour mill

collect raw material for writing a story