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).

• IPA^(key): /θiːm/

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• 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 of a talk or an artistic piece; a topic.
2. A recurring idea; a motif.
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.

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. (computing, figuratively) The collection of color schemes, sounds, artwork etc., that "skin" an environment towards a particular motif.
7. (grammar) The stem of a word.
8. (linguistics) thematic relation of a noun phrase to a verb.
9. (linguistics) Theta role in generative grammar and government and binding theory.
10. (linguistics) Topic, what is generally being talked about, as opposed to rheme.
11. 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

theme

1. Alternative form of teme (“topic”)