trope (trop)

[F. trope = Sp. Pg. It. tropo, Bacon , Advancement of Learning, ii. Wee acknowledge and beleeve the Catholick reformed Church, and if any man be dispos'd to use a trope or figure, as Saint Paul once did in calling her the common Mother of us all, let him doe as his owne rethorick shall perswade him. Milton, On Def. of Humb. Remonst. 6499 Your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarsene of your style as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey. Sheridan, Critic, i. 1. Tropes are good to clothe a naked truth, And make it look more seemly. Tennyson, Queen Mary, iii. 4. 2. In Greg or i an music, a short cadence or closing formula by which particular melodies are distinguished. Also called differentia and dis tinctio.-3. In liturgics, a phrase, sentence, or verse occasionally accompanying or interpolated in the introit, Kyrie, Gloria in Excels is, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei in different parts of the Western Church. Since the sixteenth century tropes have no longer been used.-4. 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. =Syn. 1. See simile. tropelt, n. [ME. tropel,