Other forms: subjects, subjected, subjecting
A subject is an area you study — history, music, chemistry. Favourite subject, take three subjects, the subject of the lesson.
It also means what something is about: the subject of the email, change the subject, on the subject of money. In grammar, the subject is the part of a sentence doing the verb. And a subject is a person under a monarch — a British subject — which is a legal status distinct from a citizen. The stress moves with the part of speech: SUB-ject for all the nouns, sub-JECT for the verb, which means to make somebody undergo something.
1nounsubjectAn area of study.
“Maths was her best subject by a long way.”
2nounnounWhat something is about.
“Let us change the subject.”
3noungrammarIn grammar, the part of a sentence that does the verb.
“The subject and the verb have to agree.”
4verbundergoTo make somebody undergo something unpleasant.
“Nobody should be subjected to that twice.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
subject is a topic or field.
Latin subiectus means thrown under — sub- plus iacere, to throw. A subject of a king is somebody placed under him; the subject of a sentence is what is placed under discussion. The same picture serves politics and grammar without either noticing.
Proto-Indo-European
*(H)yeh₁-
Ancient Greek
ὑποκείμενον
Latin
subiectus — lying under or near, adjacent, also subject, exposed
Old French
suget
Middle English
subget
English, today
subject
Built from
From Middle English subget, from Old French suget, from Latin subiectus (“lying under or near, adjacent, also subject, exposed”), as a noun, subiectus (“a subject, an inferior”), subiectum (“the subject of a proposition”), past participle of subiciō (“throw, lay, place”), from sub (“under, at the foot of”) + iaciō (“throw, hurl”), as a calque of Ancient Greek ὑποκείμενον.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA