subject matter

Noun

subject matter (countable and uncountable, plural subject matters)

1. The matter or thought presented for consideration in some statement or discussion; that which is made the object of thought or study.
   • The appearance of the book is as unattractive as its subject-matter. It has been reproduced from typescript by photolithography, as many theses are in these days of expensive printing; but the copy photographed has been carelessly typed on a machine with a defective spacing-mechanism and a number...1965, A. J. Bliss, “Die Reception des a-nasalis romanischer Lehnwörter im Mittelenglischen und seine Weiterentwicklung in Standard u. Dialekten by Ursula Schmidt. Heidelberg, 1963. xliii + 313 pp.”...
   • When it was released in 2005, Brokeback Mountain entered the collective consciousness in a way that is vanishingly rare for a film with queer subject matter.2025 June 20, Nick Levine, “'In every theatre, people would leave': How 'gay cowboy movie' Brokeback Mountain challenged Hollywood – and the US”, in BBC