trope
noun · verb
Simple meaning
Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
trohpIPA pronunciation (US)
tɹoʊp
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
rhetoric
Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
artliterature
Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature; a motif.
A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.
rhetoric
A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.
A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.
A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.
verb
To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif.
transitive
To use, or embellish something with, a trope.
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.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense
Used this way, trope is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Either of two parallels of latitude about 23.5 degrees to the north and south of the equator representing the points farthest north and south at which the sun can shine directly overhead…
Related to the part of the Earth's surface between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.