What's the difference between cliche and trope?

Cliche


Definition:

  • (n.) A stereotype plate or any similar reproduction of ornament, or lettering, in relief.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is a cliche to suggest that success requires long-term planning, but in the case of investing in the support structures that can extend the domain of early intervention, this is most certainly true.
  • (2) High stakes is a terrible cliche, but this is about as high stakes as diplomacy gets.
  • (3) Yet life in reality looks less rosy than these cliches suggest.
  • (4) Lawrence is said to bristle at the now-cliched description of her as "dignified".
  • (5) Looking at the current proposals, and mounting concerns about them, I'm rather reminded of cliched advice always thrown at parents with worries about a child: if you suspect something isn't right, then it is no good assuming that everything will somehow turn out OK – you must act, and fast.
  • (6) Hannah Jane Parkinson, community Dancing with the drag queens of NYC Downlow It's become a bit of cliche to say this, but Thursday really is the best day of the festival: there wasn't any mud at that stage this year; the site's not yet at maximum occupancy; and of course there's no live music – so no pressure to flog yourself to a distant stage to see a band you once half-promised yourself you ought to see.
  • (7) I'd known I was a girl since I was four, if you'll excuse the cliche, but everyone told me I couldn't be, because of a pesky penis between my legs.
  • (8) It incants the motto of the Bill Shankly school of cliche: that football is not a matter of life and death, it is far more important.
  • (9) "The models slowly evolved from girl-next-door types towards the visual cliches of the soft porn industry," they write.
  • (10) Hammond and May’s new acronym is intended to signal a break from the previous government, but is also an acknowledgement that political cliches can quickly become tired and counterproductive.
  • (11) Paradoxically, she no longer needed to prove that she was tough enough for the job; it was becoming a cliche ... to say that she was 'the best man among them'.
  • (12) Take that cosy, cliched history of black Britain that begins with the Pathe newsreel of Empire Windrush docking at Tilbury.
  • (13) The wrecked "candy ravers" and rampaging fratboys of EDM cliche are barely present – aside from more visible breasts and muscles, it is close to any European festival audience out for a good time, perhaps even a bit savvier.
  • (14) As she matured she also developed into an astute and sensitive dance actor; her portrayal of characters such as Manon or Natalia Petrovna in A Month in the Country were refreshingly free of ballet cliche.
  • (15) World Cup fashion, Brazil-cliche-style: hot pants, thigh-high boots and sequinned bikini tops.
  • (16) Ruth Rendell: In quotes Read more The cliched view of Rendell is that she suddenly changed her style when, in the 1980s, she started writing as Barbara Vine, but the truth is that from the beginning, even in the Wexford tales, she concentrated more on character and psychology than old-fashioned police procedure.
  • (17) A kind of ironic pessimism – planning to fail – is a bit of a cliche in contemporary art.
  • (18) For me it’s much more important than just playing music in clubs and dancing – all these cliches – it’s much more than that.
  • (19) When Perry was four, she ran off with the milkman (this is why, he tells me, he has always hated cliches) and married him.
  • (20) Its sounds like a cliche – and a socially costly cliche at that – but the change most likely to end abuse is one that raises the pay and conditions status of those who care for the elderly to the same as that of nursery and primary school teachers.

Trope


Definition:

  • (n.) 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.
  • (n.) The word or expression so used.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For further education, this would be my priority: a substantial increase in funding and an end to tinkering with the form of qualifications and bland repetition of the “parity of esteem” trope.
  • (2) Arguing for a new nation state, the white paper understands that the old tropes of nationhood will no longer do, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism, though until recently they sustained the anglophobic tendency of everyday nationalism.
  • (3) Ihave never really liked the liberal-left trope of Britain's "progressive majority", lately talked up by people campaigning for AV .
  • (4) Ivens's apology was issued after a meeting with Jewish community organisations including the Board of the Deputies of British Jews, which had complained to the Press Complaints Commission on Sunday, describing the cartoon as "appalling" and "all the more disgusting" for being published on Holocaust Memorial Day, "given the similar tropes levelled against Jews by the Nazis".
  • (5) As the report explains, researchers have long pointed to a widely believed cultural script of what constitutes a “real” rape – the trope of the lone lady being attacked at night as she made her way home through dark alleys.
  • (6) Purnell has long argued it is time to discard the old tropes of Brownite and Blairite.
  • (7) Melgaard pays poor lip service to these racist tropes, arguing that "racism is a form of sexuality.
  • (8) By focusing on Spock and Kirk as novices finding their footing, and putting their gut-vs-logic dynamic at the heart of the film, Abrams gives non-followers plenty to hang on to, but also pays homage to familiar Trek tropes: Bones says: "I'm a doctor, not a physicist!
  • (9) Her main project is new girl Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) who arrives at school as a clumsy, unconfident "ugly duckling" ripe for making over – allowing the film to indulge in that wonderful 80s teen movie trope: the dressing up montage.
  • (10) Instead, we returned to the old political tropes: a prime minister outside Downing street, backbenchers grousing on rolling news channels, financial experts delighted outside City buildings and Nigel Farage on College Green, standing outside the palace he wants to get in.
  • (11) You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” it said in a statement emailed to journalists with unusual zeal and which also repeated the Trump trope of “the dishonest media”.
  • (12) All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc .
  • (13) It takes the usual prison TV tropes of bent screws, lesbian affairs, claustrophobic pettiness and racial divides, and makes them seem fresh, skewing our perspectives in unexpected ways.
  • (14) Trump and his appeal embody certain universal tropes about bullying, humiliation and comedy.
  • (15) And the presence of the miniature handwritten note on textured paper is so Andersonesque as to make this essentially a trope magnified by a trope.
  • (16) It’s a trope that often plays an important part in the narrative of zombie stories.
  • (17) Recent months have seen a number of white, A-list pop artists such as Lily Allen, Iggy Azalea and Taylor Swift come under fire for appropriating black music tropes and perpetuating damaging stereotypes.
  • (18) It is a favoured trope of Nigel Farage and his fellow-travellers that the “Westminster elite” doesn’t want to talk about immigration.
  • (19) Is there a danger that – using the now-standard tropes of a strong sense of place, a dysfunctional detective, a haunting soundtrack and brutal crimes – the series will be seen as just another exercise in noir?
  • (20) No doubt it will soon make a comeback, but for now the “reform is stuck” trope has descended into an unedifying and largely evidence-free “debate” over penalty rates .