theme

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.

• IPA^(key): /θiːm/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: theme
• Rhymes: -iːm (for all senses)
• Rhymes: -iːmi (for the sense dealing with the Byzantine empire only) (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this pronunciation?)

theme (plural themes)

1. A subject, now especially of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic.
   • 1828, James Hogg, Mary Burnet:

     "Had not you once a beautiful daughter, named Mary?" said the stranger.
     "It is a heartrending question, man," said Andrew; "but certes, I had once a beloved daughter named Mary."
     "What became of her?" asked the stranger.
     Andrew shook his head, turned round, and began to move away; it was a theme that his heart could not brook.

2. A recurring idea; a motif.
   1. A concept with multiple instantiations.

      variations on the theme of entrepreneurial resourcefulness

   2. Any of various colors, or color palettes, in which a design is offered; (graphical user interface) any of various skins for an app, affecting the visuals and perhaps other elements such as sound effects.

      switch to a dark theme to conserve battery power

      Synonym: colorway

3. (dated) An essay written for school.
   • 1917, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

     Father Dolan came in today and pandied me because I was not writing my theme.

   • 1979, Tri-Quarterly, numbers 46-47, page 273:

     […] his themes and exercises were in constant demand for what we called cogging and American students rather grandly called plagiarization.

4. (music) The main melody of a piece of music, especially one that is the source of variations.
5. (film, television) A song, or a snippet of a song, that identifies a film, a TV program, a character, etc. by playing at the appropriate time.
6. (grammar) The stem of a word.
7. (linguistics) thematic relation of a noun phrase to a verb.
8. (linguistics) Theta role in generative grammar and government and binding theory.
9. (linguistics) Topic, what is generally being talked about, as opposed to rheme.
10. A regional unit of organisation in the Byzantine empire.

theme (third-person singular simple present themes, present participle theming, simple past and past participle themed)

1. (transitive) To give a theme to.

   We themed the birthday party around superheroes.

2. (computing, transitive) To apply a theme to; to change the visual appearance and/or layout of (software).

• Theme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Hemet

theme (plural themes)

1. Alternative form of teme (“topic”)

theme

1. Alternative spelling of þeme (“them”)