h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A man needs to pretend he is married and so persuades a woman he knows to act as his wife for an evening. Hilarity ensues.
A boy ends up dating two girls on the same night and has to spend the whole evening darting between venues to be with them both. Hilarity ensues.
A boy/girl wishes he was grown up and in a weird supernatural twist gets his/her wish by body swapping with his/her mother father. Hilarity ensues.

What other standard comedy situations are there?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ComedyTropes

Warning: timesink.

TRiG.

That's a great link, but it's a bit difficult to navigate, since so few of the link titles mean anything to me.

That's what makes TV Tropes so addictive: you click on the links to find out what the tropes mean.

Something in the house falls apart, and the 'man of the house' endeavours to fix it. Hilarity ensues.

A person goes some place or time or situation where the rules to which they have grown accustomed don't apply.

The name of the comedy trope used to be 'fish out of water'.

I keep having to say this: the trope *is* the name, not what it describes. "Fish out of water" is a trope. A 'fish out of water' is a cliche or device.

Not according to the "TV Tropes" website it isn't.

"Above all, a trope is a convention. It can be a plot trick, a setup, a narrative structure, a character type, a linguistic idiom... you know it when you see it."

Ah, that explains why so many people have it wrong: TV Tropes themselves got it wrong. It really is definitely the *term* or figure of speech:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=trope

The etymology dictionary will tell you what it once meant, not necessarily what it means today.

OED says:

1. figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression

2. a significant or recurrent theme; a motif

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/trope

Bob,

The word trope has more than one meaning. Trope can also mean a common motif or device. When used to the point of exhaustion, a trope becomes a cliche.

It is this "common motif or device" definition which makes sense in the context of "standard comedy situations" which was the subject of this thread.

The definition to which you point is the literary definition. That definition of trope would have as examples metaphor, irony and hyperbole, and the subject of the thread would have been something like "Standard literary devices".

How is it pronouced. Tropee or Trowp?

trəʊp (sorry the characters don't appear properly - one of those upside-down e's followed by one of those upside down omegas)

To rhyme with grope.

Which brings us back to the comedy themes.......

- a cleric (male or female) doing ordinary everyday things. Apparently this is amusing for people who think that clerics aren't ordinary, everyday people.

Equally,

- a child acting grown up

- a grown-up acting childishly

- very old people acting what would be normal if they were 50 years younger

situations:

- Someone trying to cover up a misdeed

- Someone lying and then having to continue lying in consistency with it


I expect these are all on that site, but it's just as mystifying to me as it is to elderberry.

Okay, thinking about it, my posts sounded pretty darned pompous, and I'm sorry if I offended anyone. There seems to be a standard usage for "trope", but it's incredibly vague in definition. When I first heard it, I tried looking it up because sometimes context just doesn't tell the whole story, and everything I found indicated that it referred to terms rather than the phenomena they describe. I'm familiar with situations where a misuse or misquote becomes standard by mistake (the "'Beam Me Up Scotty' effect", to coin a trope of my own), and this had characteristics I associate with this situation. However, the kind of people who use the word "trope" are the genre-savvy cognoscenti who think themselves immune from this kind of mistake, so I am fighting the tide. Having seen a few unconvincing (but still very possibly true) justifications, I now have no clear idea which is right, but the way I advocate at least has a clear precedent and logic behind it...

Certainly the Shorter Oxford lists no meaning corresponding the TV Tropes one. But I suspect that Bob is misinterpreting their use of the term. More research needed.

Oh, dearie, dearie, dearie me. I must be one of those dreaded genre-savvy cognoscenti who think themselves immune from this kind of mistake.

Bob, you are too funny. You are engaging in a standard comedy trope right now. That of the person using a different definition for a word or phrase than everyone else around them.

Let the hilarity ensue.

Oh you silly people, it's not trope, it's troupe, as in
a 'comedy troupe'. They troop around the country doing the
same schtick in every little town and village they come to.

Like a circus but with fewer animals and a more portable set.
Usually only one wagon. To fall off of.

A little song,
a little dance,
a little seltzer
down your pants.


~jwf~

drivel.

A group of web-site user attempt to buy the website. With hilarious consequences.