trope

1. (art, literature) Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature; a motif.Examples: "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."; "They have completely supported the Russians diplomatically, they’ve abstained in key votes at the United Nations, they’ve absolutely cynically repeated all the Russian tropes, particularly in places like Africa and Latin America – [by]^([sic]) blaming Nato and all of this stuff."; "Contrary to the familiar trope that regulation kills innovation, Harding argues that in fact the political, moral and legal clarity provided by the Warnock commission spurred investment and economic growth."

2. (medieval Christianity) An addition (of dialogue, song, music, etc.) to a standard element of the liturgy, serving as an embellishment.Examples: "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."; "In the broadest sense tropes are all the later musical and textual accretions to the Franco-Roman nucleus of antiphonal and responsorial chants for mass and offices that we call Gregorian chant, a repertoire primarily fixed by the early 9th century. A trope might be a newly added textless melody (a melisma), text added to a preexistent melisma (a prosula), or newly composed text and melody added to an older item as an introduction or interpolation (a trope per se)."

3. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.Examples: "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."; "[T]hese four cauſes concurring, the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the ſchoolmen, the exact ſtudy of languages, and the efficacy of preaching, did bring in an affected ſtudy of eloquoence, and copia of ſpeech, which then began to flouriſh. This grew ſpeedily to an exceſs; for men began to hunt more after words than matter; and more after the choiceneſs of the phraſe, and the round and clean compoſition of the ſentence, and the ſweet falling of the clauſes, and the varying and illuſtration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of ſubject, ſoundneſs of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment."; "It is likewiſe witty, for […] a trope familiar to this author, you have here a compariſon of—a woman's chaſtity to a piece of porcelain,—her honour to a gaudy robe,—her prayers to a fantaſtical diſguiſe,—her heart to a trinket; and all theſe together to her lap-dog, and that founded on one lucky circumſtance (a malicious critic would perhaps diſcern or imagine more) by which theſe things, how unlike ſoever in other reſpects, may be compared, the impreſſion they make on the mind of a fine lady."rhetoric

4. (geometry) Mathematical senses.Examples: "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."

5. (geometry) Mathematical senses.Examples: "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."archaic

6. (music) Musical senses.Examples: "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?"; "If the antiphon comes to an end with the “Praeparatio” trope, a musical difficulty is presented by the trope’s cadence. Although the antiphon is in the E-plagal mode and the first three trope elements cadence on E, this trope cadences on G, a rare cadence tone in this mode."