Not all tropical things are hot and rainy - in fact, a better distinguishing factor might be that their climate varies very little year-round. For example, while Honolulu may have daytime high temperatures of 80 to 85 in the winter, in the summer it's still only 85 to 90. Meanwhile, Philadelphia shivers through 30 degree weather in the winter, and routinely breaks 100 degrees in the summer.

Trop"ic*al (?), a. [Cf. L. tropicus of turning, Gr. . See Tropic, n.]

1.

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.

2. [From Trope.]

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

Jer. Taylor.

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. South.

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.

 

© Webster 1913.

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