matters

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of matter.

   The board postponed financial matters until the next session.

   She handles all personal matters discreetly and without fuss.

   Note

   The plural does most of its work in the sense of affairs and concerns: financial matters, personal matters, matters under discussion. Matter as physical substance, anything with mass and volume, is rarely pluralized, though kinds of substance can be counted. The same spelling is also the verb meaning "is important", so let the grammar guide you: matters that need attention, but a detail that matters.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of matter.

   Nothing matters to him as much as finishing the project on time.

   The smallest detail matters when you are restoring an old painting.

   Note

   A stative verb that normally takes no object: something matters, or matters to someone, as in "it matters to me." Because it describes a state rather than an action, it rarely appears in the progressive. We say it matters, not it is mattering. Regional English in England and the Caribbean also uses it transitively, meaning to care about or mind. An archaic sense, of an abscess forming pus, belongs to older usage.

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