Word.ws English Dictionary

topicalize

topicalize verb: to place the topic of a sentence at the beginning.

Verb

topicalize (third-person singular simple present topicalizes, present participle topicalizing, simple past and past participle topicalized)

  1. To place the topic of a sentence at the beginning.
  2. To treat (a subject) as a topic.
    • […] during the whole media debate the alternative point of view and the perspective and rights of the minority groups themselves were hardly, if at all, topicalized.2013, Teun A. van Dijk, News Analysis, page 203

Forms of topicalize

third-person singular presenttopicalizes
present participletopicalizing
past participletopicalized
pasttopicalized
alternative formtopicalise

Origin of topicalize

From topical + -ize.

Words formed from topicalize

Questions about topicalize

What does topicalize mean?
Topicalize means to place the topic of a sentence at the beginning.
What part of speech is topicalize?
Topicalize is a verb.
What is the past tense of topicalize?
The past tense of topicalize is topicalized.

Words near topicalize in the dictionary

  1. topicalising
  2. topicalities
  3. topicality
  4. topicalization
  5. topicalizations
  6. topicalize
  7. topicalized
  8. topicalizer
  9. topicalizers
  10. topicalizes
  11. topicalizing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: topicalize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “topicalize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/topicalize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.