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Trope

//tɹəʊp// noun, verb

Definitions

Noun

1
Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature; a motif.
"You have to give director Colm McCarthy, a Scottish TV veteran making his feature film debut, and writer Mike Carey, adapting his own novel, credit for attempting the seemingly impossible task of doing something new with the zombie subgenre. And by blending it with the common YA [young adult] trope of a young female protagonist who leads the world into a new revolutionary era, they almost get there—largely thanks to newcomer [Sennia] Nanua, who presents her character's grappling with complex themes of identity and original sin with a childlike guilelessness."
2
language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense wordnet
3
An addition (of dialogue, song, music, etc.) to a standard element of the liturgy, serving as an embellishment.
"Usually known as 'tropes,' these interpolations consisted at first of but a few words; those of the Introit at the beginning of Mass on great festivals, however, often took the form of dialogues."
4
A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor. rhetoric
"Since the tories have thus disappointed my hopes, / And will neither regard my figures nor tropes; I'll speech against peace while Dismal's my name, / And be a true whig, while I'm Not-in-game."
5
Mathematical senses.; A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.
"Hence the section must be a conic passing through six nodes, that is, the plane touches the surface all along a conic, and is therefore a trope. The complete section of the surface by a trope is a conic counted twice; since this passes through six nodes, the trope must touch the six quadric tangent cones along generators which are tangents to the singular conic."

Show 6 more definitions

6
Mathematical senses.; The reciprocal of a node on a surface. archaic
"I take account of conical and biplanar nodes, or, as I call them, cnicnodes, and binodes; of pinch-points on the nodal curve; and of close-points and off-points on the cuspidal curve: viz. I assume that there are / C, cnicnodes, / B, binodes, / j, pinch-points, / #92;chi, close points, / #92;theta, off-points, / deferring for the present the explanation of these singularities. The same letters, accented, refer to the reciprocal singularities. Or using "trope" as the reciprocal term to node, these will be / C', cnictropes, / B', bitropes, / j', pinch-planes, / #92;chi', close-planes, / #92;theta', off-planes; / but these present themselves, not in the equations above referred to, but in the reciprocal equations."
7
Musical senses.; A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.
"Is not the trope of muſic, to avoid or ſlide from the cloſe or cadence, common with the trope of rhetoric, of deceiving expectation? Is not the delight of the quavering upon a ſtop in muſic, the ſame with the playing of light upon the water?"
8
Musical senses.; A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.
"The eighty six-note segments were originally tabulated by Hauer and are the basis of his twelve-tone system. Each of [Josef Matthias] Hauer's tropes consists of two hexachords of mutually exclusive content, so that each pair of hexachords includes all twelve tones of the semitonal scale. Only eight hexachords may be associated in this way with their own transpositions. These generate the eight tropes illustrated in examples 141 and 128. Each of the remaining seventy-two hexachords must be paired with a dissimilar hexachord in order to form a trope."
9
Musical senses.; A cantillation pattern, or one of the marks that represents it. Judaism
"The Torah was chanted in a loud and strong voice so that all could hear. This cantillation of the Torah—trope—is shown by musical notation which serves grammatical and exegetical functions, ta'amay hamikra or ta'amay n'ginah. They put down in a final form an oral tradition that had been maintained for centuries. The Ashkenazim today have six systems of cantillation, each reflective of the texts and time of chanting. For example, on Tishah B'av the tunes are sad and doleful; on Purim the trope resembles a speedy narrative; the readings of Yamim Nora'im are quite majestic, and so on."
10
Philosophical senses.; Any of the ten arguments used in skepticism to refute dogmatism. Greek
"For [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, ancient skepticism preserved the essence of the skeptical principle, and the tropes express this principle. In the earlier ten tropes, there is, according to Hegel, a lack of abstraction that becomes obvious in the fact that their diversity could be grasped under more general points of view. […] Sextus [Empiricus] explains that the first four tropes are based on the judging subject; these deal with the differences among animals, the differences among human beings, the differences that distinguish the various senses, and, finally, circumstantial differences."
11
Philosophical senses.; A particular instance of a property (such as the specific redness of a rose), as contrasted with a universal.
"Trope theory, though a minority view today, has been popular at various times throughout the history of philosophy, especially among medieval philosophers. Trope theory holds that properties and relations are themselves (unrepeatable) particulars. (Tropes are also called 'abstract particulars' – 'abstract' in the sense of fine, partial and diffuse, not in the sense of outside space and time.) Thus the redness of a particular billiard ball is a trope, located where the ball is and nowhere else. A different but exactly resembling billiard ball has a numerically different but exactly resembling redness trope. There is no colour property common to, or instantiated in, both balls (similarly all other properties and relations)."

Verb

1
To use, or embellish something with, a trope. transitive
"The motive for troping the introit was twofold. Firstly there was the desire to add colour, mystical fervour, to the restrained, matter-of-fact Roman rite. Besides this psychological reason there was a practical one. The introit was sung by the choir while the celebrants proceeded towards the altar to officiate at mass. This part of the ritual lent itself very readily to embellishment and expansion."
2
Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.; To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif. transitive
""So clomb this first grand Thief into God's Fold" (4.192), [John] Milton writes, thus troping Satan's transgression as neither deception, seduction, nor disobedience, though he presents it in those terms elsewhere, but rather as robbery."
3
Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.; To turn into, coin, or create a new trope. transitive
"I troped the World Wide Web as an especially dangerous research venue. "Don't pick up anything unless you know where it has been," I said."
4
Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.; To analyse a work in terms of its literary tropes. transitive
5
To think or write in terms of tropes. intransitive
"By acting in loco parentis, the written word performs its own usurpations of generating authority and generated meanings. Therefore, after the brothers demolish the authority of the word as written, they ar able to substitute alternative authorities: the word as spoken, the word as added, the word as troped, the word as altered, the word as hidden."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

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