What is "tropic"

Tropic \Trop"ic\, a. Of or pertaining to the tropics; tropical.

Tropic bird (Zo["o]l.), any one of three species of oceanic belonging to the genus Pha["e]thon, found chiefly in tropical seas. They are mostly white, and have two central tail feathers very long and slender. The yellow-billed tropic bird. Pha["e]thon flavirostris (called also boatswain), is found on the Atlantic coast of America, and is common at the Bermudas, where it breeds.

Tropic \Trop"ic\, a. [Atropine + -ic.] (Chem.) Of, pertaining to, or designating, an acid obtained from atropine and certain other alkaloids, as a white crystalline substance slightly soluble in water.

Tropic \Trop"ic\, n. [F. tropique, L. tropicus of or belonging to a turn, i. e., of the sun, Gr. ? of the solstice, ? (sc. ?) the tropic or solstice, fr. ? to turn. See Trope.]

1. (Astron.) One of the two small circles of the celestial sphere, situated on each side of the equator, at a distance of 23[deg] 28[min], and parallel to it, which the sun just reaches at its greatest declination north or south, and from which it turns again toward the equator, the northern circle being called the Tropic of Cancer, and the southern the Tropic of Capricorn, from the names of the two signs at which they touch the ecliptic.

2. (Geog.)

   1. One of the two parallels of terrestrial latitude corresponding to the celestial tropics, and called by the same names.

   2. pl. The region lying between these parallels of latitude, or near them on either side.

      The brilliant flowers of the tropics bloom from the windows of the greenhouse and the saloon.
      --Bancroft.

late 14c., "either of the two circles in the celestial sphere which describe the northernmost and southernmost points of the ecliptic," from Late Latin tropicus "of or pertaining to the solstice" (as a noun, "one of the tropics"), from Latin tropicus "pertaining to a turn," from Greek tropikos "of or pertaining to a turn or change; of or pertaining to the solstice" (as a noun, "the solstice," short for tropikos kyklos), from trope "a turning" (see trope).\n

\nThe notion is of the point at which the sun "turns back" after reaching its northernmost or southernmost point in the sky. Extended 1520s to the corresponding latitudes on the earth's surface (23 degrees 28 minutes north and south); meaning "region between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn" is from 1837.

a. 1 Of, or relating to the tropics; tropical. 2 (qualifier weather climate) hot and humid. 3 (context biochemistry English) (''noncomparative'') Having the quality of indirectly inducing a biological or chemical change in a system or substrate. n. Either of the two parallels of latitude 23°27′north and south of the equator; the farthest points at which the sun can be directly overhead; the boundaries of the torrid zone or tropics.

1. adj. relating to or situated in or characteristic of the tropics (the region on either side of the equator); "tropical islands"; "tropical fruit" [syn: tropical]

2. of weather or climate; hot and humid as in the tropics; "tropical weather" [syn: tropical]

n. either of two parallels of latitude about 23.5 degrees north and south of the equator representing the points farthest north and south at which the sun can shine directly overhead and constituting the boundaries of the torrid zone or tropics

The term tropic refers to the tropics, a region of the Earth surrounding the Equator.

Tropic may also refer to:

Tropic was The Miami Herald's Sunday magazine, published as an insert in the Sunday edition from 1967 until 1998. Tropic won three Pulitzer Prizes and published many writers who went on to become well known. The magazine published humor columnist Dave Barry's, Gene Weingarten, Carl Hiaasen, Paul Levine, Madeleine Blais, Joel Achenbach, Bill Cosford, Tom Shroder among others.

The magazine created the Tropic Hunt, now known as the Herald Hunt.

Tropic or Trópico is a 1945 painting by Spanish artist Josep Renau. Renau executed the painting during his exile in México, while he collaborated with Mexican muralist painters such as David Alfaro Siqueiros. The painting represents a landscape, probably a Mexican natural space. Three vultures surround a fish skeleton on the lower right side of an uninhabited landscape. The scene evokes the desolation and destruction of humankind provoked by the wars of the 20th century, in the precise year of the end of World War II, which left a death toll of 60 million people.

Tropic is Renau's personal response to the grief and mourning provoked by the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The painting is one of the most important and influential works by the artist. Renau depicts a landscape with the plastic means of the Escuela de Vallecas, a group of modern Spanish painters pursuing the representation of the Castilian topography as a ruthless land. Both this reference to the Spanish art of the 1930s and the vultures eating carrion as an allegory of modern wars give this painting a deep sense of melancholy and tragedy. In this work, Renau advances the presence of skulls that Picasso used recurrently after 1945 to express the trauma of World War II and his experience in the Paris of the German Occupation.

Renau reacts to the trauma of war with angular shapes and expressionistic brushstrokes that remain close to the language of Picasso's Guernica and Joan Miró's The Reaper, two large-format paintings conceived for the Spanish Pavilion in the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Paris International Exposition) in the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Renau played a crucial role in the gestation of the Spanish Pavilion; he was responsible for Picasso's participation and executed a series of photomurals that covered the exterior of the building designed by Josep Lluis Sert and Luis Lacasa.