trope

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A figure of speech using words in nonliteral ways, such as a metaphor.
2. n. A word or phrase interpolated as an embellishment in the sung parts of certain medieval liturgies.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In rhetoric, a figurative use of a word; a word or expression used in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it, or a word changed from its original signification to another for the sake of giving spirit or emphasis to an idea, as when we call a stupid fellow an ass, or a shrewd man a fox. Tropes are chiefly of four kinds: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony; but to these may be added allegory, prosopopœia, hyperbole, antonomasia, and some others. Tropes are included under figures in the wider sense of that word. In a narrower sense, a trope is a change of meaning, and a figure any ornament except what becomes so by such change.
2. n. In Gregorian music, a short cadence or closing formula by which particular melodies are distinguished. Also called differentia and distinctio.
3. n. In liturgics, a phrase, sentence, or verse occasionally accompanying or interpolated in the introit, Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei in different parts of the Western Church. Since the sixteenth century tropes have no longer been used.
4. n. A geometrical singularity, the reciprocal of a node. In the case of a plane curve, it is a multiple tangent; in the case of a torse, a multiple plane; in the case of a surface, either a plane having a conic of contact or a torse bearing two or more lines of contact.

Wiktionary

1. n. literature Something recurring across a genre or type of literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror movies or ‘once upon a time’ as an introduction to fairy tales. Similar to archetype and cliché but not necessarily pejorative.
2. n. A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.
3. n. music A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.
4. n. music A phrase or verse added to the mass when sung by a choir.
5. n. music A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.
6. n. Judaism A cantillation.
7. v. To use, or embellish something with a trope.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. 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.
2. n. The word or expression so used.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense