Definition of "immaterial"
immaterial
adjective
comparative more immaterial, superlative most immaterial
Having no matter or substance.
Quotations
No? why art thou then exaſperate, thou idle, / immateriall skiene of Sleyd ſilke; thou greene Sarcenet / flap for a ſore eye, thou taſſell of a Prodigals purſe thou: […]
c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i], column 1
You feel like a disembodied spirit, immaterial; and you seem to be able to touch beauty as though it were a palpable thing; and you feel an intimate communion with the breeze, and with the trees breaking into leaf, and with the iridescence of the river. You feel like God. Can you explain that to me?
1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter XXI, in The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […]
(figurative) So insubstantial as to be irrelevant.
Quotations
She comforted her father better than she could comfort herself, by representing that though he certainly would make them nine, yet he always said so little, that the increase of noise would be very immaterial.
1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter XVI, in Emma: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II or III), London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray
He has also been good enough to recommend to me many tradesmen who are ready to supply these articles in any quantities; each of whom has been here already a dozen times, cap in hand, and vowing that it is quite immaterial when I pay—which is very kind of them; […]
1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], chapter 1, in Tom Brown at Oxford: […], part 1st, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, page 11
He was perpetually at her side, trying, apparently, to preserve the thread of a disconnected talk, the fate of which was, to judge by her face, profoundly immaterial to the young lady.
1875 January–December, Henry James, Jr., “Christina”, in Roderick Hudson, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1876, page 178