subtitle
Americannoun
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subtitles
plural
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a secondary or subordinate title of a literary work, usually of explanatory character.
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a repetition of the leading words in the full title of a book at the head of the first page of text.
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Movies, Television, Digital Technology.
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a translation or transcription of spoken language in a television program, film, video, or video game, as of dialogue in a foreign language or speech that is audible but may not be easily understood, displayed as a graphic overlay on the lower part of the screen.
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(in silent films) an intertitle or caption.
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verb (used with object)
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subtitles,
present (3rd person singular)
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subtitled,
past participle, past
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subtitling
present participle
noun
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an additional subordinate title given to a literary or other work
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Also called: caption. (often plural) films
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a written translation superimposed on a film that has foreign dialogue
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explanatory text on a silent film
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verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
subtitlesimple
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subtitlessimple
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have subtitledperfect
-
has subtitledperfect
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am subtitlingprogressive
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are subtitlingprogressive
-
is subtitlingprogressive
-
have been subtitlingperfect progressive
-
has been subtitlingperfect progressive
Past
-
subtitledsimple
-
had subtitledperfect
-
was subtitlingprogressive
-
were subtitlingprogressive
-
had been subtitlingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of subtitle
Explanation
A subtitle can either be the second, explanatory, part of a longer title, or the words that appear at the bottom of a movie screen to translate dialogue that's spoken in a foreign language. If you've got hearing loss, you might watch TV with the subtitles on, so that you can read the dialogue as it's spoken. And when a foreign film is shown in the U.S., it usually has English subtitles. The subtitle of a book, on the other hand, comes after (or under) its main title. You might call your memoirs "My Story," with the subtitle "An Incredible Life." The prefix sub-, fittingly, means "under."
Vocabulary lists containing subtitle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
As a subtitle tells us, the footage has been “redacted by police,” for which we likely should be grateful.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Do you hope that people will adopt it rather than using the other terms that make up the subtitle of your book?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
The subtitle I’m using for this project is “L.A.’s Last Enclave of Black Glory.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
The book’s subtitle, “Adventures in Funding a Creative Life,” says it all.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
Only the scatological humor of the subtitle: A Companion for the Close-stool.
From The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 by George R. Guffey
The biggest gift of the streaming revolution is subtitles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 15, 2026
He has also noticed his son picking up on the English subtitles on animé TV shows.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
The film will have English-language subtitles, which Evans said was no longer "such a weird and arty thing".
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
The film had subtitles and a complicated “eat the rich” subtext.
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
It was in a foreign language and had subtitles, which was fun because I had never read a movie before.
From "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky
Mr. Woolfson’s book, which is subtitled “Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence,” proposes not the gene-by-gene editing of today’s most ambitious therapies but a more radical rewriting of the human genome.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
Any "video-on-demand" platform with more than 500,000 users will need to comply with rules overseen by UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom regarding "protections from harmful material" and increased availability of subtitled, signed and audio-described programming.
From Barron's ● Feb. 24, 2026
In the book, subtitled “Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk,” the author intersperses dispatches from her trip with harrowing personal reflections on marriage, motherhood and the self.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
Both films are subtitled and in American Sign Language, turning the table on hearing viewers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2025
This was, in short, another memory game—that was why the Staff Picks display had been subtitled “Our Most Memorable Reads.”
From "Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library" by Chris Grabenstein
And in motivated readers, subtitling works in tandem with reading to enhance vocabulary and literacy.
From Slate ● Sep. 26, 2023
In the mid-1950s, Mr. Tanner and Mr. Goretta settled in London, where they found work curating archives and subtitling films for the British Film Institute.
From New York Times ● Sep. 19, 2022
“We really wanted to create dynamic subtitling and, again, make it part of the design, as opposed to something that is separate and would take the audience’s eyes away from the actors.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 6, 2022
She has a successful career subtitling for a TV network and laughs as she describes herself as very good at "adulting" and never being late for anything.
From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2021
When it comes to translating films and series, subtitling and dubbing are the most common forms of translation.
From Salon ● Oct. 29, 2021
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
