mat

Etymology 1

From Middle English matte, from Old English meatte, from Late Latin matta, from Punic or Phoenician (compare Hebrew מיטה \ מִטָּה (mitá, “bed, couch”)).

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. (athletics) 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
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
   The fad for blaming all mass extinctions (such as happened at the end of the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs vanished) on impacts of objects from space was extended to the Pleistocene in 2007. That year a group of scientists proposed that the North American extinctions were due to a comet or meteorite impact over the Carolinas, near the beginning of the Younger Dryas event, about 12,900 years ago. The original evidence for this supposed impact was a "black mat" of organic material in many Clovis sites, plus microscopic nano-diamonds in deep-sea cores, and rare Platinum group metals in Greenland ice cores from around 12,900 years ago. 2016-11-15, Donald R. Prothero, The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals, page 222

verb

1. (transitive) To cover, protect or decorate with mats.
2. (intransitive) To form a thick, tangled mess; to interweave into, or like, a mat; to entangle.

Etymology 2

noun

1. (video games, slang, chiefly Fortnite, in the plural) 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. 24 October 2019, Christopher Groux, “'Fortnite' Weapon Upgrade Guide - Upgrade Bench Locations & More”, in Newsweek, New York, N.Y.: Newsweek Publishing LLC, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-30
   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.] [28 November 2020, Gökhan Çakır, “Common Fortnite terms and their meanings”, in Dot Esports, archived from the original on 2023-05-21
   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. 25 September 2021, Alan Bernal, “Viral Fortnite TikTok trick shows how to use Armored Walls for easy kills”, in Dexerto, archived from the original on 2021-10-26
   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. 16 July 2022, Sarthak Chauhan, “Fortnite YouTuber using 1000 mats in less than 30 seconds shows exactly what not to do”, in Sportskeeda, archived from the original on 2023-05-29

Etymology 3

Compare matte.

noun

1. (coppersmithing) An alloy of copper, tin, iron, etc.; white metal.

Etymology 4

A clipped form of matinee.

noun

1. (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". 1898, The Hotel/Motor Hotel Monthly, volume 6, page 27

Etymology 5

noun

1. Alternative spelling of matte (“decorative border around a picture”)
   the mat of a daguerreotype

Etymology 6

adj

1. Alternative form of matte (“not reflecting light”)
   Frons mat black, orbits slightly paler, more greyish; mesonotum distinctly mat, greyish-black, but with some subshine; […] 2013, K. A. Spencer, Agromyzidae (Diptera) of Economic Importance, page 264

Etymology 7

noun

1. (printing) Short for matrix.