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

Researchers reimagined the plastic as a valuable industrial raw material. — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 5 Aug. 2026

China is closing the gap on all of them at once from a position where raw material, manufacturing, and frontier AI research, the same open models and world-model work described above, sit inside one country's borders together. — Ashish Bhatia, Forbes.com, 4 Aug. 2026

Investors from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe are putting money into African agriculture, seeding the ability of farmers there to intensify and diversify their crops and livestock with an eye toward processing raw materials for export. — The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Monitor, 4 Aug. 2026

Her coverage spans from raw materials and regulation to supply chain transformation and systems change. — Bella Webb, Vogue, 3 Aug. 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