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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Trope \Trope\, noun [L. tropus, Gr. ?, fr. ? to turn. See {Torture}, and cf. {Trophy}, {Tropic}, {Troubadour}, {Trover}.] (Rhet.) (a) 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. (b) The word or expression so used.
In his frequent, long, and tedious speeches, it has been said that a trope never passed his lips. --Bancroft.
Note: Tropes are chiefly of four kinds: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. Some authors make figures the genus, of which trope is a species; others make them different things, defining trope to be a change of sense, and figure to be any ornament, except what becomes so by such change.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
trope
noun: language used in a figurative or nonliteral sense [syn: {figure of speech}, {figure}, {image}]
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