trup

Noun

trope (plural tropes)

1. Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature; a motif.
   • 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...2017 February 23, Katie Rife, “The Girl With All The Gifts tries to put a fresh spin on overripe zombie clichés”, in The A.V. Club
2. (medieval Christianity) An addition (of dialogue, song, music, etc.) to a standard element of the liturgy, serving as an embellishment.
   • 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.1918, Paul Studer, Le mystère d'Adam, an Anglo-Norman drama of the twelfth century
3. (rhetoric) A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.
   • 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.1711 [December?] (date written), Jonathan Swift, “An Excellent New Song. Being the Intended Speech of a Famous Orator against Peace [i.e., Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham].”, in Thomas Sheridan...
4. A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.
   • 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...1905, R[onald] W[illiam] H[enry] T[urnbull] Hudson, “The Quartic Surface”, in Kummer’s Quartic Surface, Cambridge: At the University Press, →OCLC; republished Cambridge: Cambridge University Press...
5. (archaic) The reciprocal of a node on a surface.
   • 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...1868 November 12, [Arthur] Cayley, “VI. A Memoir on the Theory of Reciprocal Surfaces”, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, volume 159, part I, London: Printed by Taylor and...
6. A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.
   • 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?1765, Francis Bacon, “The Second Book of Francis Bacon: Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human”, in The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and...

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