Noun

(en noun)

Physical matter; material.

* 1699 , , Heads designed for an essay on conversations

Study gives strength to the mind; conversation, grace: the first apt to give stiffness, the other suppleness: one gives substance and form to the statue, the other polishes it.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Welcome to the plastisphere , passage=Plastics are energy-rich substances , which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field.}}

The essential part of anything; the most vital part.

* (John Dryden) (1631-1700)

Heroic virtue did his actions guide, / And he the substance , not the appearance, chose.

* Bishop Burnet

This edition is the same in substance with the Latin.

* (Edmund Burke) (1729-1797)

It is insolent in words, in manner; but in substance it is not only insulting, but alarming.

Substantiality; solidity; firmness.

Material possessions; estate; property; resources.

* Bible, (w) xv. 13

And there wasted his substance with riotous living.

* (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)

Thy substance , valued at the highest rate, / Cannot amount unto a hundred marks.

* (Jonathan Swift) (1667–1745)

We are destroying many thousand lives, and exhausting our substance , but not for our own interest.

Drugs (illegal narcotics)

(theology) Hypostasis.

Noun

(-)

(physics, chemistry, historical) A hypothetical base substance from which all chemical elements were believed to have been made; subatomic particles.

* 2002 , Philip Ball, The Elements: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford 2004, p. 73:

Dumas wondered whether the fundamental building blocks of atoms might be some smaller division of the hydrogen atom: a half, say, or a quarter. This basic substance became known as ‘protyle ’.