Meaning of trope in English

trope

/trəʊp/ us

/troʊp/

art, literature specialized

something such as an idea, phrase, or image that is often used in a particular artist's work, in a particular type of art, in the media, etc. :

Human-like robots are a classic trope of science fiction.

The politician's speech was full of racist tropes.

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cliché

language specialized

in rhetoric (= the study of the ways of using language effectively), a way of using words that means something different from their ordinary meaning:

For those unfamiliar with poetic tropes, synecdoche is a figure of speech by which the part stands for the whole, such as "wheels" to mean "a car".

Rhetorical tropes of antithesis and opposition recur throughout Shakespeare's writing.

Compare

figure of speech

More examplesFewer examples

Women fainting was a common trope or stereotype of Victorian England.
I enjoyed the way the novel subverted old tropes.
The screenplay draws on some of the most beloved tropes of romantic comedies.
The treatise contains the first description of the trope of personification in Western rhetorical theory.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Ideas, concepts and theories

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Figurative use of language

(Definition of trope from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of trope

trope

For the landowning classes, the demonstration of investment of labour and capital had moral and political connotations through the trope of improvement.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

There are no things, only words, motifs, tropes, and half-hearted aspirations after something that never even existed.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Although the castrato is not the principal cause of social decline, the trope of the castrato's effeminacy explains his prominence in literature on the subject.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Helpfully, there are also concise and critical summaries of key social work tropes, such as that on 'attachment theory' (pp. 78-80).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

A third factor is the degree of iconicity between the images and their referents in the analogical trope, be it metaphor or simile.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The more it taxes people, the more hours of the day people have to 'work for the government' (a familiar trope in right-wing rhetoric).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

That contemporary tropes entered the language of politicians hardly moves beyond platitude.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Instead, ' the father king ' is simply evoked as a hollow trope.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Common tropes included the walled city, the port and the market city.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

As a result, the pros and cons of all of these previously examined tropes are once again in evidence.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The generalization is sweeping, but the tropes aptly symbolize the type of history written in this book.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This is not momentary weakness on her part, but a systematic trope in the novel.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Each trope is discussed in one of the sub-subsections that follow.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Does the trope dictate the interpretation, as narrativists insist it must?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These tropes permit the characterization of objects in different kinds of indirect, or figurative, discourse.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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