Figure of Speech
Trope
From Greek tropos: a turning. Roman Jakobson (1956) identified metaphor and metonymy as the two fundamental tropes underlying all language. Distinct from schemes (which alter word order rather than meaning).
Definition
Any figure of speech in which words are used in a non-literal sense — the broader category encompassing metaphor, irony, metonymy, and synecdoche.
Example
Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony are Jakobson's four master tropes of figurative language.