Words & WritingGreek → English
Theme
/θiːm/noun
The central subject or idea running through a work.
The Greek roots
θέμα
théma
something set down
Literally: “a thing placed”
Follow a root:θέμα1 word
The story of the word
θέμα comes from τίθημι, to put or set, so it covers whatever has been laid down: a deposit of money, a proposition, the subject a speaker sets before an audience. Byzantine government used θέμα for a military province, the districts the empire was carved into after the seventh century. The musical sense, a tune that then gets varied, arrived in English from Italian usage in the eighteenth century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
thesisepithetanathemahypothesis
In a sentence
Every chapter circles back to the same theme of borrowed money.