change the subject

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Idioms and Phrases

Deliberately talk about another topic, as in If someone asks you an embarrassing question, just change the subject . This term uses subject in the sense of “a topic of conversation,” a usage dating from the late 1500s.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

On Friday, after arriving back in the United States, Van Hollen told reporters that the Trump administration was attempting to change the subject from a constitutional crisis over due process.

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The opposition party will delight in being able to tell a simple story about destructive incompetence, one that resonates even with voters who only get their news by accident from TikTok dance videos; the party in power will try to change the subject, ineffectually.

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I usually just downplay it and change the subject.

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But when this happens, I usually switch to talking about the weather, sports, or something like that, or try to change the subject, basically, because I’m not trying to have a full-blown argument with my Uber driver in L.A. traffic.

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Whenever he comes up, I change the subject.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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