topos

English - English

Definition of topos in English English dictionary

A literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula

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 certain mathematical structure found in category theory

a traditional theme or motif or literary convention; "James Joyce uses the topos of the Wandering Jew in his Ulysses

Hyphenation

top·os

Etymology

[ 'tO-"päs, 'tä- ] (noun.) 1936. From Ancient Greek τόπος (topos, “place”). Compare topic.