a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression:both clothes and illness became tropes for new attitudes toward the selfmy sense that philosophy has become barren is a recurrent trope of modern philosophyperhaps it is a mistake to use tropes and parallels in this eminently unpoetic age
a significant or recurrent theme; a motif:she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope
Origin:
mid 16th century: via Latin from Greek tropos 'turn, way, trope', from trepein 'to turn'
