TROPHY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Trophy

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/trˈoʊfi/ Listen

noun

Trophy n. (pl. trophies)

1.

(Gr. & Rom. Antiq.) A sign or memorial of a victory raised on the field of battle, or, in case of a naval victory, on the nearest land. Sometimes trophies were erected in the chief city of the conquered people. Note: A trophy consisted originally of some of the armor, weapons, etc., of the defeated enemy fixed to the trunk of a tree or to a post erected on an elevated site, with an inscription, and a dedication to a divinity. The Romans often erected their trophies in the Capitol.

2.

The representation of such a memorial, as on a medal; esp. (Arch.), an ornament representing a group of arms and military weapons, offensive and defensive.

3.

Anything taken from an enemy and preserved as a memorial of victory, as arms, flags, standards, etc. "Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears, And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bars, And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars."

4.

Any evidence or memorial of victory or conquest; as, every redeemed soul is a trophy of grace.

Trophy money, a duty paid formerly in England, annually, by housekeepers, toward providing harness, drums, colors, and the like, for the militia.

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Etymology of 'Trophy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Trophy" Quotes from Famous Books

... finance—or, rather, when I began to feel that it was exhausting me—I took my clubs, and strolled up the hill to the links to play off a match with a sportsman from the village. I had entered some days previously for a competition for a trophy (I quote the printed notice) presented by a local supporter of the game, in which up to the present I was getting on nicely. I had survived two rounds, and expected to beat my present opponent, which would bring me into the semi-final. ...

— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... temples wound with the holy ribboned chaplet, all glittering in white-robed array. Him he meets and chases down the plain, and, standing over his fallen foe, slaughters him and wraps him in great darkness; Serestus gathers the armour and carries it away on his shoulders, a trophy, King Gradivus, to thee. Caeculus, born of Vulcan's race, and Umbro, who comes from the Marsian hills, fill up the line. The Dardanian rushes full on them. His sword had hewn off Anxur's left arm, with all the circle of the shield—he had uttered brave ...

— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... did not say twelve; it was a hideous-looking creature, and some negroes I met soon after told me they had found it in the swamp, and hung it dead on the burning tree. Certainly the two together made a dreadful trophy, and a curious contrast to the lovely bowers of bloom I had just been contemplating with ...

— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... passages that I think ever came from his pen. Commenting, in his Essay on Landscape Gardening (1828), on the proper domestic ornaments of the Castle Pleasaunce, he has this beautiful burst of lamentation over the barbarous innovations of the Capability men:—"Down went many a trophy of old magnificence, courtyard, ornamented enclosure, fosse, avenue, barbican, and every external muniment of battled wall and flanking tower, out of the midst of which the ancient dome, rising high above all its characteristic accompaniments, ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Arnold himself. Leaving in his hands all endeavours to discover the two scoundrels, who had entirely decamped, Kennedy gave him one of the guns, while he carried with him the other to keep as a trophy in his rooms ...

— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

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