Trōp'ic or Trōp'ic-al, a.
a. [Fr. tropique, Sp. & It. tropico, Lat. tropicus, Gr. τροπικός. See TROPIC, supra, and TROPE.]
Sense 1. Of, or pertaining to, the tropics; being within the tropics; as, tropical climates; tropical latitudes; tropical heat; tropical winds.
Sense 2. Incident to the tropics; as, tropical diseases.
Sense 3. [From trope.] Rhetorically changed from its proper or original sense; figurative.
The foundation of all parables is some analogy or similitude between the tropical or allusive part of the parable and the thing intended by it. South.
Tropical or hieroglyphic writing, such writing as represents a thing by qualities which resemble it. Warburton.—Tropical year, the period occupied by the sun in passing from one tropic or one equinox to the same again, having a mean length of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 47.8 seconds, which is 20 minutes, 22.8 seconds shorter than the sidereal year, on account of the precession of the equinoxes.