to "trope"

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has this transitive verb,but not in the present sense: "to turn into or
to employ as a metaphor or other rhetorical figure" (I think).

2001 Lidia Yuknivitch _Allegories of Violence_ (N.Y.: Routledge) 10: [I]
suggest that we read war as a trope, a figure of thought on which meaning
turns. The writing of war, the troping of war happens at the level of
narrative language.

(The Civil War, Vietnam...just the infinite play of signs. No biggie.)

JL

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