theme

Meanings

Noun

• A subject, now especially of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic.
• A recurring idea; a motif.
• An essay written for school.
• The main melody of a piece of music, especially one that is the source of variations.
• A song, or a snippet of a song, that identifies a film, a TV program, a character, etc. by playing at the appropriate time.
• The collection of color schemes, sounds, artwork etc., that "skin" an environment towards a particular motif.
• The stem of a word.
• thematic relation of a noun phrase to a verb.
• Theta role in generative grammar and government and binding theory.
• Topic, what is generally being talked about, as opposed to rheme.
• A regional unit of organisation in the Byzantine empire.

Verb

• To give a theme to.
• To apply a theme to; to change the visual appearance and/or layout of (software).

Origin

• From Middle English teme, from Old French teme, tesme (French thème), from Latin thema, from Ancient Greek θέμα, from τίθημι, reduplicative from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- ("to put, place, do") (whence also English do).