1. something that constitutes the place or point from which something else originates, takes form, or develops: The Greco-Roman world was the matrix for Western civilization.
2. a formative part, as the corium beneath a nail.
3. Biology.
• the intercellular substance of a tissue.
• ground substance.
4. the fine-grained portion of a rock in which coarser crystals or rock fragments are embedded.
5. fine material, as cement, in which lumps of coarser material, as of an aggregate, are embedded.
6. gangue.
7. a crystalline phase in an alloy in which other phases are embedded.
8. a mold for casting typefaces.
9. master (def. 20).
10. a grid formed by perpendicular intersections that define potential space that may be filled, as by pixels on a screen, ink in dot-matrix printing, or material in 3D printing.
11. (in a press or stamping machine) a multiple die or perforated block on which the material to be formed is placed.
12. a rectangular array of numbers, algebraic symbols, or mathematical functions, especially when such arrays are added and multiplied according to certain rules.
13. a rectangular display of features characterizing a set of linguistic items, especially phonemes, usually presented as a set of columns of plus or minus signs specifying the presence or absence of each feature for each item.
14. a mold made by electroforming from a disk recording, from which other disks may be pressed.
15. the womb.

1. a substance, situation, or environment in which something has its origin, takes form, or is enclosed
2. the thick tissue at the base of a nail from which a fingernail or toenail develops
3. the intercellular substance of bone, cartilage, connective tissue, etc
• the rock material in which fossils, pebbles, etc, are embedded
• the material in which a mineral is embedded; gangue
5. printing
• a metal mould for casting type
• a papier-mâché or plastic mould impressed from the forme and used for stereotyping
6. (formerly) a mould used in the production of gramophone records. It is obtained by electrodeposition onto the master
7. a bed of perforated material placed beneath a workpiece in a press or stamping machine against which the punch operates
8. metallurgy
• the shaped cathode used in electroforming
• the metal constituting the major part of an alloy
• the soft metal in a plain bearing in which the hard particles of surface metal are embedded
9. the main component of a composite material, such as the plastic in a fibre-reinforced plastic
10. a rectangular array of elements set out in rows and columns, used to facilitate the solution of problems, such as the transformation of coordinates. Usually indicated by parentheses: (a d b e c f)
11. the main clause of a complex sentence
12. a rectangular array of circuit elements usually used to generate one set of signals from another
13. the womb

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