Tropæan

UK/tɹəʊˈpiːən/

Tropæan adjective: blowing from sea to land.

Adjective

Tropæan (not comparable)

(obsolete, rare) Blowing from sea to land.
- The frequent rains brought by the Tropæan winds from the Irish Seas.1686, Robert Plot, chapter 2, in The Natural History of Staffordshire, page 44

Proper noun

Tropæan

(rare, Greek and Roman antiquities) An epithet of Jupiter and Zeus: turner to flight; he who puts to flight.
- At the seven gates seven Argive warriors rag’d, / / But, Chief with daring Chief engag’d, / / Left to Tropæan Jove their glittering spoils.1813, Sophocles (author) and R. Potter (translator), “Antigone” (lines 156–161) in The Tragedies of Sophocles, page 142
- The sanctuary of Tropaean (‘turner to flight’) Zeus was made by the Dorians after they had conquered the Amyclaeans and the rest of the Achaeans.1898, Sir James George Frazer (translator), Pausanias’s Description of Greece I, page 152

Forms of Tropæan

alternative form	Tropaean

Origin of Tropæan

From Latin tropae(us) (“turning back”, “returning”, adjective) + -an; from the Plinian phrase ventī tropaeī (“sea-breezes”, literally “winds blowing from the sea towards the land”), from Ancient Greek τροπαῖος (tropaîos, adjective) (also used in the noun phrase πνοή τροπαία (pnoḗ tropaía, “an alternating wind, blowing back from sea to land”)), from τρόπος (trópos, “turning”).

Questions about Tropæan

What does Tropæan mean?: Tropæan means blowing from sea to land.
What part of speech is Tropæan?: Tropæan can be an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Tropæan?: Tropæan is pronounced /tɹəʊˈpiːən/ (UK).

Words near Tropæan in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: Tropæan (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “Tropæan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trop%C3%A6an. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.