Trope vs. Cliche

Tropenoun

Something recurring across a genre or type of art or literature, such as the ‘mad scientist’ of horror movies or the use of the phrase ‘once upon a time’ as an introduction to fairy tales; a motif.

Tropenoun

(rhetoric) A figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a nonliteral or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

Tropenoun

(geometry) Mathematical senses.

Tropenoun

A tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic.

Tropenoun

(archaic) The reciprocal of a node on a surface.

Tropenoun

(music) Musical senses.

Tropenoun

A short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music.

Tropenoun

A pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

Tropenoun

(Judaism) A cantillation pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

Tropenoun

(Roman Catholicism) A phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir.

Tropenoun

(philosophy) Philosophical senses.

Tropenoun

(Greek philosophy) Any of the ten arguments used in skepticism to refute dogmatism.

Tropenoun

(metaphysics) A particular instance of a property (such as the specific redness of a rose), as contrasted with a universal.

Tropeverb

(transitive) To use, or embellish something with, a trope.

Tropeverb

(transitive) Senses relating chiefly to art or literature.

Tropeverb

To represent something figuratively or metaphorically, especially as a literary motif.

Tropeverb

To turn into, coin, or create a new trope.

Tropeverb

To analyse a work in terms of its literary tropes.

Tropeverb

(intransitive) To think or write in terms of tropes.

Tropenoun

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.

Tropenoun

language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense

Tropenoun

a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression

Tropenoun

a significant or recurrent theme; a motif

Clichenoun

A stereotype plate or any similar reproduction of ornament, or lettering, in relief.

Clichenoun

a trite or obvious remark.

Clichenoun

a trite or obvious remark