- relating to, originating with, or directed by those of highest rank: a centralized, top-down organization with a chain of command reporting up from every corner of the earth.
- organized or proceeding from the larger, more general structure to smaller, more detailed units, as in processing information: Top-down investing looks at the big picture, or how the overall economy drives the markets, and then focuses on individual stocks.
- noting or relating to a methodology used in the design and coding of programs that takes a high-level description of a problem and successively breaks it into smaller and simpler subunits.
- controlled, directed, or organized from the top
