TROPICAL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... landing-stage, a handful of houses, mostly mud-built, the funereal heat-green of palm and banana, a flood of tropical sunshine lighting the little wharf, ...

— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... limpid brilliance of a gigantic crystal, where the smallest object was in startling focus, and the very sunbeams cut with scissors. The people below trailed shadows like running ink. The light was ultra-tropical. One looked for drill suits and pith headgear, and was amazed to find pajamas insufficient ...

— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... interpreters of early Scripture will remember, perhaps, that the Garden of Eden was in reality an oasis of trees in the great valley of Mesopotamia, and even today "garden" in the oriental term means a group of trees. It has been proven by experience in these different tropical realms that where tree production is biggest and nuts and other products are grown under intensive cultivation, an acre will produce more food than where grazing is practiced. I spent a very pleasant year in California and saw some of ...

— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... Guiana are clothed with mangrove swamps, the trees of which seemed scarlet, so covered were they with red ibises! Nothing more gay-looking can be imagined than the Cayenne River, and the pretty town standing on its banks—the wooden houses all separated from each other by gardens in which the tropical vegetation displays an unexampled luxuriance and variety. Flowers of every hue, set among huge calabash trees, gigantic palms of every kind, such as the traveller's palm with its immense fan-shaped leaves, ...

— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... multitude increases daily for six or eight weeks, additions, in the form of new family groups, constantly augmenting their numbers. Some time in September the migration call reaches the Martins, and, yielding to its spell, they at once depart toward their winter home in tropical ...

— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

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