It seems to me that if we think of _matter_ as something more than properties recognised by the senses, we are going back on the road which leads to the confusion of the alchemical times.
The alchemists expressed their conceptions in what seems to us a crude, inconsistent, and very undescriptive language.

Chemists use a language which is certainly symbolical, but also intelligible, and on the whole fairly descriptive of the facts.
A name is given to each elementary substance, that is, each substance which has not been decomposed; the name generally expresses some characteristic property of the substance, or tells something about its origin or the place of its discovery.

The names of compounds are formed by putting together the names of the elements which combine to produce them; and the relative quantities of these elements are indicated either by the use of Latin or Greek prefixes, or by variations in the terminal syllables of the names of the elements..