The purpose of this definition is to answer one of the great, heretofore unanswered questions of our era, or at least our semester:

What the f--- is a trope?

Like any good 'netizen, when confronted with a question such as this, I head directly to Wikipedia. While you can't trust everything you read on Wikipedia, I find it's usually a good start. So let's see what Wikipedia has to say about tropes.

First of all, it seems as though there are four kinds of tropes: linguistic ones, literary ones, philosophical ones and artistic ones. For the sake of brevity (although, really, how brief can a 2000-word description be?) we shall explore the literary definition:

We shall also look at the linguistic definition:

Types of linguistic tropes include irony, metaphors, similes, exaggeration effect and personification.

Good old Merriam-Webster pulls no punches with their defintion:

Finally, let's see what the folks at the TV Tropes Wiki have to say on the subject:

I like their definition best. To the folks at TV Tropes Wiki, a trope doesn't necessarily have to mean unoriginal, derivative work. Considering that some tropes date back to Shakespeare (and, I imagine, even earlier - Beowulf and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are chock full of tropes, as is practically every single body of mythology on the planet), and considering that there are a limited number of narratives in the world, it is to be expected that certain themes will be repeated again and again throughout culture. After all, humans - even dynamic, creative, original ones - take their inspiration from one another, and from their interactions with each other.

(Aside: this is where memetics comes into play, which is probably why Wikipedia linked the definition of meme to the definition of trope. Basically, memes are bits of information that trickle throughout a population like an intellectual virus of sorts. Slang is one kind of meme where otherwise nonsensical language enters the vernacular through use and implicit understanding on the part of both the speaker and the listener. Another kind of meme is the trope. See how it all follows?)

As I found myself liking their definition so much, I decided to browse through their selection of tropes and pick out a few:

• Appeal to Obscurity

  Bob is arguing with Sally about how doing something will cause her to fail. To further his point, he gives an example of someone who did that thing. She will say that she's never heard of that person.

   

  He says: "Exactly!"

  Usually in the arsenal of too-clever-by-half characters, like Seth on The O.C. or pretty much the entire cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

   

• As You Wish

  A character in disguise or otherwise hidden reveals himself to friends through saying something only he or she would say.

  I am so lame. I picked this because I instantly knew it was a reference to one of the greatest movies released in my short lifetime, The Princess Bride. Come on, you know you love it! Anyways, part of what makes this movie so great is how it takes tropes - long-held, crusty, near-ossified ones - and flips them on their heads. In fact, I find that this quality is often what separates good writing from great writing. Good writing knows about tropes and uses them liberally, while great writing knows about tropes and subverts and deconstructs them.

   

• Because Destiny Says So

  Heroes find that they are fated to accomplish some task or face some overwhelming foe. Sometimes this is a prophecy, sometimes it's predestination or karma left over from a previous life, and sometimes it's because someone went back in time and told what he knew.

   

  Whatever the mechanism, the prediction can become a central issue for the hero, either as a goal to pursue or a fate to dodge, and can drive much of a storyline.

  You know, this might be one of the tropes that sits firmly in cliche territory. From Oedipus Rex to Final Fantasy, this trope rears its head most often in science fiction, fantasy and religious writing.

   

• David Versus Goliath

  Any climactic combat or competition where the hero is the underdog. Generally refers to conflicts where the hero is of much smaller physical stature than the villain.

   

  This, too, is teetering on the edge of Clicheville, pop. 264, but as I rather like stories where underdogs come out on top, I'll give it a pass. This trope is another ancient one, as indicated by its title, a shout-out to the shepherd boy with his slingshot.

   

• Robot Girl

  She's gorgeous, she's sexy, and she's got a 50,000-mile warranty. She's the Robot Girl, a staple character type in anime. Most commonly found in science fiction and Sentai shows, but not exclusively. Despite their artificial nature, Robot Girls are almost never sexless -- they are at the very least cute as hell, and more often drop-dead gorgeous, if not outright seductresses. (Robotic males, on the other hand...) Despite how cute or sexy she may be, though, the Robot Girl is often a dangerous opponent in a fight, even if they're only created to do common household chores.

  This trope is pretty familiar to me, as someone who is a fan of anime. (Although I really don't care for 'fan service' or the emphasis on teen-boy sexuality, and don't even start me on hentai.) However, one need not be into anime to have seen this trope in action - one just needs to be a twenty-something raised in the United States of America during the early 90s.

   

  Need a hint?

   

  (Quick poll: Which sitcom better represents the apex/nadir (whatever, they are interchangable in this context) of cheesarific, low-budget family sitcoms from the early 90s - Small Wonder or Full House?)