The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος (tropos), "a turn, a change",[1] related to the root of the verb τρέπειν (trepein), "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change";[2] this means that the term is used metaphorically to denote, among other things, metaphorical language.
A trope or "mode" refers to skeptical stock arguments or "ways of refuting dogmatism.
One classical solution is that of realism as found in the middle period of Plato's philosophy, with the Republic as a crowning work.
Somehow the form of a specific color creates many secondary images of itself, as when a prototype is used to make copies or an object casts several shadows.
Here the thesis is that universals such as the ideas or forms of Plato are unnecessary in an explanation of language, thought and the world.
One attraction of the nominalistic program is that if it can be carried out it solves Plato's problem in Parmenides, since the need for a single idea or form or universal green then vanishes and it can be expunged through Occam's razor, i.e. the rule that, other things being equal, one should not multiply explanatory entities beyond necessity.
It says, briefly, that if we introduce several instances of green as separate individuals, we nevertheless have to accept that the reason that we group them together is because they are similar.
Two popular recent solutions to the problem of universals, as it relates to the possibility of entities existing in multiple locations at the same time, are as follows.
David Armstrong, a prominent Australian philosopher, argues, that there are instantiated universals, like Russell and the middle Plato.
Trope theorists explain what it is for two tokens (individual instances) to be of the same type in terms of resemblance.
For Hayden White, tropes historically unfolded in this sequence: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and finally, irony.