1. a commonly used theme, device, or cliché in literature, film, or other creative works
2. a figure of speech that uses words in a nonliteral sense, such as a metaphor or simile
Usage: literary; rhetoric

Examples

• The evil stepmother is a common trope in fairy tales.
• Horror movies often rely on the trope of the final girl who survives until the end.
• The author avoided tired tropes and created truly original characters.
• Shakespeare used many classical tropes in his plays.
• The film subverted the typical romantic comedy trope by having the couple break up.
• Students learned to identify various tropes in poetry class.
• The detective story followed every trope of the genre.