TROPICAL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Tropical

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/trˈɑpɪkəl/ Listen

adjective

Tropical adj.

Of or pertaining to the tropics; characteristic of, or incident to, the tropics; being within the tropics; as, tropical climate; tropical latitudes; tropical heat; tropical diseases.

Rhetorically changed from its exact original sense; being of the nature of a trope; figurative; metaphorical. "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."

Tropic month. See Lunar month, under Month.

Tropic year, the solar 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, 46.0 seconds, which is 20 minutes, 23.3 seconds shorter than the sidereal year, on account of the precession of the equinoxes.

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Etymology of 'Tropical'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tropical" Quotes from Famous Books

... quote from "The Polar and Tropical Worlds," written by two scientists, one apparently a German, the other designated "Scientific Editor of the American Cyclopedia." The book was published in 1877, eleven years or more after the ...

— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... through the serene tranquillities of the tropical seas, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wretched hideousness of ...

— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... it with the hand, then cooked it on a hot stone before an open fire. It is still made in that manner in the heart of Mexico, and we could tell a story of how we saw this done one night in the midst of a dense tropical forest, while muleteers and mozas of a great caravan sat around their little campfires, whose fitful light served to intensify the weird appearance of the shadows of the Indians as they passed to and fro among ...

— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes--The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... neither case has the race possessed the land, nor have the national characteristics been transmitted to the dwellers therein as a whole. They have realized, rather, the idea recently formulated by Mr. Benjamin Kidd for the development of tropical regions,—administration from without. ...

— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... is nothing to be frightened at. This is a manly world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with self-respect. Occidental manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the questions which assail my young friend have risen in my reader's mind or not, he knows perfectly well that nobody ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

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