In Has a stopped clock ever really helped solve a crime? - The Straight Dope, Cecil uses “trope” to mean “cliché” (stopped timepiece solves a crime), but trope really means “figure of speech”. Trope is a shameless buzzword and almost no one really knows the meaning of it. That doesn’t stop them from dropping it here and there, hoping to sound erudite.
Complaining about the “true” meaning of a word versus its evolved use; isn’t that a trope?
Cecil, $1000, kayaker, $1000, and 666sd666, just playing.
Three years on the dope and our OP breaks his silence for this.
It’s also the collective noun for Henry Miller’s semiautobiographical novels.
The new (and it is new) sense of trope was added to the in-progress new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007.
But it’s been used that way for decades. I know because I’ve used it in my critical work for decades.
And damn you Gaudere for my typoing Merriam.
English dictionaries are descriptive; they follow established usage, sometimes by decades.
(The French tend to stay with proscriptive dictionaries that attempt to define and control the language. We’re discussing English here.)
“Prescriptive”. A “proscriptive” dictionary would list only words that shouldn’t be used.
Isn’t that the entire purpose of the French Academy?
How does one say “typo” in approved French?
Typeau. Typeaux for plural.
Without trying to speak for John, the new meaning added by the OED is as follows–
OED didnt have it that way previously. Yes, it was used as you used it, Exapno.
Motif is actually closer to how I use it than cliche would be.
My wife once improvised (in French) an entire comedy sketch called Les gendarmes d’Académie.