topic > define

noun

• The subject matter of a conversation or discussion.
  • usage: "he didn't want to discuss that subject"; "it was a very sensitive topic"; "his letters were always on the theme of love"
  • synonyms: subject, theme
• Some situation or event that is thought about.
  • usage: "he kept drifting off the topic"; "he had been thinking about the subject for several years"; "it is a matter for the police"
  • synonyms: subject, issue, matter

• (n.) A treatise on forms of argument; a system or scheme of forms or commonplaces of argument or oratory; as, the Topics of Aristotle.
• (a.) Topical.
• (n.) The subject of any distinct portion of a discourse or argument or literary composition; also, the general or main subject of the whole; a matter treated of; a subject, as of conversation or of thought; a matter; a point; a head.
• (n.) An external local application or remedy, as a plaster, a blister, etc.
• (n.) An argument or reason.
• (n.) One of the various general forms of argument employed in probable as distinguished from demonstrative reasoning, -- denominated by Aristotle to`poi (literally, places), as being the places or sources from which arguments may be derived or to which they may be referred; also, a prepared form of argument, applicable to a great variety of cases, with a supply of which the ancient rhetoricians and orators provided themselves; a commonplace of argument or oratory.