subtext

From sub- + text.

subtext (countable and uncountable, plural subtexts)

1. (literature) The implicit meaning of a text, often a literary one, or a speech or dialogue.

   Coordinate terms: context, paratext, peritext, epitext

   Everyone heard the announcement, but not everyone agrees on what the subtext was.

   • 2011, Patrick Spedding, James Lambert, “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy”, in Studies in Philology, volume 108, number 1, page 113:

     The word dick has meant penis since the 1890s, but Chester Gould’s private detective “Dick Tracy” has no puerile subtext related to this word.

   • 2012 July 27, Jason Zinoman, “Chekhov's Banana Peel”, in Slate‎^[1]:

     While his major plays appear on the surface to have little plot, their subtext is full of overheated romance and melodrama.

• → Hebrew: סאבטקסט (sábtekst)

subtext (third-person singular simple present subtexts, present participle subtexting, simple past and past participle subtexted)

1. To create or use a subtext.
   • 1996, Womonspace News: Our Voice in the Lesbian Community: Dec 1996‎^[2]:

     All the participants used subtexting as an important viewing strategy of mainstream films. We are always looking for innuendoes and cues either with certain individual characters or between female characters.

   • 2002, Collins, Brandilyn, Getting into character : seven secrets a novelist can learn from actors‎^[3], →OCLC:

     Subtexting is the technique that every author needs to know in order to create dialogue that is rich in meaning while sounding natural, for in real life, this is the way people often converse.

• butt sex, buttsex

From sub- +‎ text.

subtext n (plural subtexte)

1. subtext

• “subtext”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026