topic
Pluraltopics
- 1The subject or theme of a discussion or piece of writing, or a general area of interest.
The committee moved on to the next topic on the agenda.
Several unrelated topics came up during the long interview.
Note
The everyday noun, and the one most phrases are built on: a topic of conversation, the next topic on an agenda, the warning to stick to the topic. It is countable, so topics come up, get raised and get dropped. Ground is a near synonym with a spatial picture behind it, which suits a word whose Greek root meant "a place."
- 2A thread of messages on an online forum, all dealing with a single subject.
A moderator locked the topic after the argument got heated.
She accidentally posted her question in the wrong topic.
Similarthread
Note
Online forums borrowed the word for the container rather than the subject. Here a topic is the thread itself, the opening post and every reply. That is why people post in a topic, and why a moderator can lock or move one, which nobody does to a subject of discussion. A single subject can easily sprawl across several such topics.
- 3A messaging component, similar to a message queue, that delivers each published message to multiple subscribers.
Each service subscribes to the topic to receive new order events.
The system publishes notifications to a topic that thousands of clients monitor.
Note
A publish-subscribe term: producers publish to a named topic, and every subscriber receives its own copy of each message. That is the point of contrast with a plain queue, which hands each message to a single consumer. In design discussions the two words are therefore not interchangeable, and choosing one over the other says how many receivers a message should reach.
- 4A musical figure or sign meant to suggest a particular style or genre to the listener.
The slow movement opens with a pastoral topic evoking the countryside.
Analysts traced several hunting topics woven through the symphony.
Note
Music semiotics uses the word for a conventional gesture that carries a style with it, such as a hunting-horn call or a dance rhythm. Esti Sheinberg's Music Semiotics (2012) puts it in Peircean terms, calling topics interpretants: signs that become new signifiers. The noun is countable and usually takes a style word in front of it, as in a pastoral topic or hunting topics.
Less common meanings
- 5An argument or reason advanced in support of a position.
contumacious persons, who are not to be fixed by any principles, whom no topics can work upon
1675, John Wilkins, Of the Principle and Duties of Natural ReligionNote
Rhetoric's sense, now gone from ordinary English: a topic was a line of argument, drawn from the commonplaces that the adjective's Greek ancestor points to. John Wilkins's Of the Principle and Duties of Natural Religion (1675) speaks of stubborn people "whom no topics can work upon," where topics press on a mind as reasons do. A modern reader would hear "subjects" there, so today say argument or reason.
- 6A remedy applied externally to a particular spot on the body, such as a plaster or a blistering agent.
The surgeon applied a topic to the inflamed joint each evening.
Amongst topics or outward medicines none are more precious than baths.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of MelancholyNote
A physician's word from the age of plasters and blisters, built on the Greek tópos, "a place": a topic treated one spot rather than the whole body. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy pairs topics with "outward medicines" and ranks baths as the most precious of them. The sense is obsolete now. Read it as a historical term in older texts, and don't revive it in modern writing.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin 'topica', from Ancient Greek 'topikós' ('pertaining to a place, local, or topical'), which comes from 'tópos' ('a place'), a word of Pre-Greek origin.