theme

Meaning

1. A subject, now especially of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic.
2. A recurring idea; a motif.
3. A recurring idea; a motif.
4. An essay written for school.
5. The main melody of a piece of music, especially one that is the source of variations.
6. A song, or a snippet of a song, that identifies a film, a TV program, a character, etc. by playing at the appropriate time.
7. The stem of a word.
8. Thematic relation of a noun phrase to a verb.
9. Theta role in generative grammar and government and binding theory.
10. Topic, what is generally being talked about.
11. A regional unit of organisation in the Byzantine empire.

topic

main idea

musical theme

melodic theme

depicted object

subject area

melodic subject

human body

object matter

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/θiːm/

From Middle English teme, from Old French teme, tesme (French thème), from Latin thema, from Ancient Greek θέμα (théma), from τίθημι (títhēmi, “I put, place”), reduplicative from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place, do”) (whence also English do). Doublet of thema.