TROPE

trope, figure of speech, figure, image

(noun) language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology

Noun

trope (plural tropes)

(art, literature) Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror movies or the use of the phrase ‘once upon a time’ as an introduction to fairy tales; a motif.

(rhetoric) A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(geometry) Mathematical senses.

A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.

(archaic) The reciprocal of a node on a surface.

(music) Musical senses.

A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.

A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(Judaism) A cantillation pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(Roman Catholicism) A phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir.

(philosophy) Philosophical senses.

(Greek philosophy) Any of the ten arguments used in skepticism to refute dogmatism.

(metaphysics) A particular instance of a property (such as the specific redness of a rose), as contrasted with a universal.

Usage notes

In the art or literature sense, the word trope is similar to archetype and cliché, but is not necessarily pejorative.

Verb

trope (third-person singular simple present tropes, present participle troping, simple past and past participle troped)

(transitive) To use, or embellish something with, a trope.

(transitive) Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.

To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif.

To turn into, coin, or create a new trope.

To analyse a work in terms of its literary tropes.

(intransitive) To think or write in terms of tropes.

Synonyms

• tropify

Anagrams

• Perot, Petro, Porte, opter, petro, petro-, ptero-, repot, tepor, toper

Source: Wiktionary


Trope, n. Etym: [L. tropus, Gr. Torture, and cf. Trophy, Tropic, Troubadour, Trover.] (Rhet.) (a) The use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it; the use of a word or expression as changed from the original signification to another, for the sake of giving life or emphasis to an idea; a figure of speech. (b) The word or expression so used. In his frequent, long, and tedious speeches, it has been said that a trope never passed his lips. Bancroft.

Note: Tropes are chiefly of four kinds: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Some authors make figures the genus, of which trope is a species; others make them different things, defining trope to be a change of sense, and figure to be any ornament, except what becomes so by such change.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

3 April 2025

WHOLE

(noun) an assemblage of parts that is regarded as a single entity; “how big is that part compared to the whole?”; “the team is a unit”


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Coffee Trivia

There are four varieties of commercially viable coffee: Arabica, Liberica, Excelsa, and Robusta. Growers predominantly plant the Arabica species. Although less popular, Robusta tastes slightly more bitter and contains more caffeine.

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