Noun

(en noun)

That which is done or is to be done; matter; concern; business of any kind, commercial, professional, or public; — often in the plural.

:

Any proceeding or action which it is wished to refer to or characterize vaguely.

:

(lb) An action or engagement not of sufficient magnitude to be called a battle.

A material object (vaguely designated).

:

*

*:The house was a big elaborate limestone affair , evidently new. Winter sunshine sparkled on lace-hung casement, on glass marquise, and the burnished bronze foliations of grille and door.

*{{quote-book, year=1944, author=(w)

, title= The Three Corpse Trick, section=chapter 5 , passage=The dinghy was trailing astern at the end of its painter, and Merrion looked at it as he passed. He saw that it was a battered-looking affair of the prahm type, with a blunt snout, and like the parent ship, had recently been painted a vivid green.}}

An adulterous relationship (from affaire de cœur ).

Noun

(en noun)

Subject; theme; a category or general area of interest.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}

(Internet) Discussion thread.

(obsolete) An argument or reason.

* Bishop Wilkins

contumacious persons, who are not to be fixed by any principles, whom no topics can work upon

(obsolete, medicine) An external local application or remedy, such as a plaster, a blister, etc.

(Wiseman)