'antimatter' originates from modern English, specifically combining the Greek prefix 'anti-' and the Middle English word 'materie' (from Old French 'matiere' and Latin 'materia'), where 'anti-' meant 'against' and 'materia' meant 'material'.

'antimatter' originally appeared in hyphenated form as 'anti-matter' in early 20th-century scientific writing and later solidified into the single word 'antimatter'. The element 'matter' itself comes from Middle English 'materie' via Old French 'matiere' from Latin 'materia'.

Initially used to denote a hypothetical counterpart or 'opposite' of ordinary matter, the term came to have the specific modern physics meaning of material made of antiparticles.