topline

From top +‎ line.

topline (plural toplines)

1. The upper curvature of a horse's or dog's withers, back, and loin.

   Alternative form: top line

   • 2002, Ted S. Stashak, Ora Robert Adams, Adams' Lameness in Horses, page 75:

     When viewing the horse in profile, attention must be paid to the curvature and proportions of the topline.

2. (often attributive) Top billing.

   Alternative form: top line

   • 1969 July, Ebony, volume 24, number 9, page 146:

     In recent weeks Cosby has, perhaps more than any other topline entertainer of the moment, been both at the pinnacle and at the crossroads.

3. (of concepts or statements thereof; often attributive) The first line, the topmost-ranking line; the most important thing.

   Alternative form: top line

   Near-synonyms: (in attributive uses) TLDR, BLUF, bottom-line, bottom line

   topline takeaways

   • 2014, Brett King, “Not Your Father's Banking Habits”, in Breaking Banks: The Innovators, Rogues, and Strategists Rebooting Banking‎^[1], John Wiley and Sons, →ISBN, pages 99-100:

     Brett [King]: Kevin, it's interesting that Novantas [the company that Kevin manages] has taken a progressive approach to research in this area, where you've looked at changing behavior in respect to the way people are buying in [bank] branches and visiting branches, and you've examined this over a long period of time, particularly in relationship to transactional and revenue activity. Tell us about what you folks have found through your extensive research.
     Kevin [Travis]: Absolutely. I think a couple of really topline takeaways. There's been a pretty steady erosion of in-branch transactions of at least 3 percent per year for the last seven to eight years. We think that's accelerating closer to 5 to 7 percent annually right now. As we see banks roll out new technology like image-enabled ATMs where you can just stick your check in a slot [for deposit], that's going to accelerate the decline of in-branch day-to-day payments and service transactions. If you think about compounding that out at 3 percent each year, you pretty quickly get to a 25 to 30 percent decline, which is one of the big dilemmas facing the banking industry today. Huge service capacity, a lot of cost, but not nearly as much volume—how do we handle that? The other big takeaway that we've seen with our most recent insight was the shopping and buying funnel for banking products has really fragmented and blown apart. At least two-thirds of folks are almost exclusively shopping for financial products online! Over 75 percent at least do it as one of their options. They might go into branch, but everybody is really shopping online, and that's fundamentally changing how people buy products. They used to walk into a branch, have a conversation with the folks at the branch, and then the bank had the opportunity to sell them a product. We think now, customers are really looking online, picking bank products, and then the reason they end up in a branch (which they do still at a rate of around two of every three customers) is there is still a psychological element of "I just want to kick the tires." The problem for banks is, if all they want to do is "kick the tires" and then they never come back, having 88,000 branches to do that one interaction is a very expensive way to sell to customers.

4. The edge that runs along the top of the opening of a shoe.

   Alternative form: top line

5. (music) The vocal parts of a piece of music (particularly pop).

   Alternative form: top line

topline (third-person singular simple present toplines, present participle toplining, simple past and past participle toplined)

1. (transitive) To bill (a performer) as the primary entertainer in a production.
   • 1983, John Kobal, A History of Movie Musicals: Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance, page 147:

     A popular series of musical shorts he made for Mack Sennett's company in 1930 added to his success as a radio vocalist, and had made him a star by the end of 1931, when Paramount toplined him in The Big Broadcast […]

2. (ambitransitive) To be billed as the primary entertainer in (a production).
   • Variety [2]

     [Whitney] Houston's success in music led her to topline the features "Waiting to Exhale," "The Preacher's Wife" and the telefilm "Cinderella."

   • 2006, Everett Aaker, Encyclopedia of Early Television Crime Fighters, page 418:

     Although occasionally he toplined in a “B” picture, he found his greatest achievements were as a character actor.

   • 2009, Robert Viagas, I'm the Greatest Star:

     Over the next few years he toplined three "Encores!" productions […]

3. (transitive) (music) To compose and/or sing the vocal part of a song (particularly pop).

• topliner

• pointel, pontile, potline

topline (Cyrillic spelling топлине)

1. inflection of toplina:
   1. genitive singular
   2. nominative/accusative/vocative plural