Topic

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -É’pɪk

Alternative forms

• topick obsolete

Origin

From Latin topica, from Ancient Greek τοπικός (topikos, "pertaining to a place, local, pertaining to a common place, or topic, topical"), from τόπος (topos, "a place").

Full definition of topic

Adjective

1. topical

Noun

1. Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.
• 2013-08-03, The machine of a new soul, The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.
2. (Internet) Discussion thread.
3. (obsolete) An argument or reason.
• Bishop Wilkinscontumacious persons, who are not to be fixed by any principles, whom no topics can work upon
4. (obsolete, medicine) An external local application or remedy, such as a plaster, a blister, etc.

Synonyms

• subject

Derived terms

• topical
• subtopic
• off-topic
• topic map

Anagrams

• cop it
• optic
• picot