trope

Meanings

1. Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature; a motif.
2. An addition (of dialogue, song, music, etc.) to a standard element of the liturgy, serving as an embellishment.
3. A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.
4. Mathematical senses.
5. A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.
6. The reciprocal of a node on a surface.
7. Musical senses.
8. A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.
9. A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.
10. A cantillation pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.
11. Philosophical senses.
12. Any of the ten arguments used in skepticism to refute dogmatism.

1. To use, or embellish something with, a trope.
2. Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.
3. To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif.
4. To turn into, coin, or create a new trope.
5. To analyse a work in terms of its literary tropes.
6. To think or write in terms of tropes.

Etymology

From Latin tropus, from Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos, “a manner, style, turn, way; a trope or figure of speech; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic”), related to τροπή (tropḗ, “solstice; trope; turn”) and τρέπειν (trépein, “to turn”); compare turn of phrase. The verb is derived from the noun.

Translations