Hypertext Webster Gateway: "trope"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Trope \Trope\, n. [L. tropus, Gr. ?, fr. ? to turn. See
{Torture}, and cf. {Trophy}, {Tropic}, {Troubadour},
{Trover}.] (Rhet.)
(a) The use of a word or expression in a different sense from
that which properly belongs to it; the use of a word or
expression as changed from the original signification to
another, for the sake of giving life or emphasis to an
idea; a figure of speech.
(b) The word or expression so used.
In his frequent, long, and tedious speeches, it has
been said that a trope never passed his lips.
--Bancroft.
Note: Tropes are chiefly of four kinds: metaphor, metonymy,
synecdoche, and irony. Some authors make figures the
genus, of which trope is a species; others make them
different things, defining trope to be a change of
sense, and figure to be any ornament, except what
becomes so by such change.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
trope
n : language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense [syn: {figure
of speech}, {figure}, {image}]
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