Trope

How to spell trope

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce trope

What does trope mean?

1. nounA common or recurring theme, motif, or convention, especially in storytelling or culture.
2. nounA figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a non-literal sense, such as metaphor or irony.

Trope in a sentence

• The reluctant hero is a well worn trope in action films.

• The lecturer explained how metaphor functions as a trope in classical rhetoric.

• The novel deliberately subverts every romance trope the reader expects.

• Irony is the trope the poet uses to mean the opposite of what is said.

Where does trope come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek tropos, meaning 'a turn', 'a way', or 'a manner', which itself grew from the verb trepein, 'to turn'. In classical rhetoric a trope was a figure of speech, a place where a word was 'turned' away from its literal sense into a metaphorical one, as when calling a brave person a lion. It passed into Latin as tropus and entered English in the sixteenth century as a technical term for such rhetorical turns. Over time the meaning broadened, and today it most often names a familiar, recurring device or theme in stories, films, and culture. The same Greek root for turning also lies behind 'tropic' (the lines where the sun appears to turn back) and 'heliotrope' (a plant that turns toward the sun), which is a useful reminder that the silent final 'e' simply caps the short word rather than changing the vowel.

How the word is built

• trope (from Greek tropos: a turn, a way of turning a phrase)