topos means A literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula. It carries an Arena rating of 1556, earned across 4 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, topos ranks #936 of 17,123 for Most Malleable Words, #5,934 of 17,130 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #6,221 of 17,137 for Most Exacting Words, #6,425 of 17,116 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
topos is pronounced /ˈtoʊpɒs/.
Why “topos” is a great word
A recurring, conventional theme, motif, or rhetorical formula in literature, or a highly structured mathematical category that generalizes the notion of a set, deriving from Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos, “place”), specifically from the elliptical phrase τόπος κοινός (tópos koinós, “common place”), first recorded in English in the literary sense in 1936. Unlike a motif, which recurs with symbolic significance within a specific work, or a general category, which denotes any abstract algebraic structure, a topos is a furnished conceptual space inherited by tradition. It is the hero’s weary return home, the locus amoenus of the idyllic meadow, the entire universe of discourse contained within elegant axioms—a furnished room in the endless house of thought, waiting for a new occupant to give it temporary, local meaning, and a persistent architecture of experience across millennia because certain truths admit of only so many shapes.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos, “place”). Compare topic.
noun
- A literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula.e.g.“The ritual of weighing the soul was an iconographic topos familiar to Christianity from the ceremony of the weighing of sins at the Last Judgement.”
- A category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space (or, more generally, on a site).
- A toilet.
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- topothesia 62% match — The description of an imaginable or nonexistent place. vs topos →
- motif 61% match — A recurring or dominant element; an artistic theme. vs topos →
- topography 59% match — A precise description of a place. vs topos →
- toposheet 58% match — A kind of map that shows the topographic features of an area. vs topos →
- topoanalysis 56% match — The study of human identity as it relates to the places in people's lives. vs topos →
- tropology 56% match — The use of a trope (metaphor or figure of speech). vs topos →
- topograph 55% match — A monument erected in a high place, such as a hilltop, indicating the direction and distance of notable landscape features which can be seen with the naked eye from that point. vs topos →
- mythos 54% match — Anything transmitted by word of mouth, such as a fable, legend, narrative, story, or tale (especially a poetic tale). vs topos →