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topic

noun

Simple meaning

The subject matter of a conversation or discussion.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

tahpik

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈtɑpɪk

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The subject matter of a conversation or discussion

  2. Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.

  3. computing

    A component similar to a message queue which supports multiple subscribers.

  4. Internet

    Discussion thread.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The subject matter of a conversation or discussion

Used this way, topic is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use topic

  • “He kept drifting off the topic.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Subject

general topic

Musical

important topicspecific topic

Other combinations

topic sentenceparticular topicmain topicresearch topicnew topic

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • topicaladjectiveDerived adjective

    Related to The subject matter of a conversation or discussion.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • topic sentencenounCompound term

    A sentence that states the topic of its paragraph.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: subject matter of a conversation or discussion

mattersubjecttheme

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.