1556 M. Huggarde Displaying of Protestantes (new ed.) f. 112 Those wordes be spoken tropically and figuratiuely.

1564 J. Rastell Confut. Serm. M. Iuell f. 140 The body of Christ is, onlye figuratiuelye,..tropicallie, imaginatiuelie, in the Sacrament.

1604 W. Shakespeare Hamlet iii. ii. 226 King. What doe you call the play? Ham. The Mousetrap, mary how tropically [1603 trapically].

1646 Sir T. Browne Pseudodoxia Epidemica iii. iii. 111 Spanish Mares, whose swiftnesse [is] tropically expressed from their generation by the wind. View more context for this quotation

1703 W. Burkitt Expos. Notes New Test. Gal. v. 24 The Work of Mortification (called here Tropically a Crucifixion).

1751 G. Kalmár Mr. Bate's Answer to Dr. Sharp's Two Diss. Answered 14 Oath is to be understood here tropically not literally.

1809 W. Irving Hist. N.Y. II. v. vii. 58 It was tropically observed by honest old Socrates,..that heaven had infused into some men..a portion of intellectual gold.

1879 R. T. Smith St. Basil 91 There are multitudes of expressions applied in Scripture to God, which we agree are to be tropically taken.

1920 E. D. Burton Crit. & Exegetical Comm. on Epist. to Galatians 226 The term..is not used in its strict sense of heir,..but, tropically, possessor of a promised possession.

1992 Compar. Stud. Society & Hist. 34 332 This discourse..is always (pre)figured tropically.

1785 Public Advertiser 12 Feb. The above mentioned Lady is to be called fourteen years of age—But estimating by something else—marry tropically and by the law of climate and its influence, of a West Indian sun on female habits—Thus calculating the nativity of the thing, and instead of fourteen it may be called twenty!

1852 N. Hawthorne Blithedale Romance xvii. 176 The sunshine..lay tropically there.

1886 Pall Mall Gaz. 10 June 9/1 The rain..continues, although not quite so tropically.

1896 Academy 11 July 27/1 Hume's tropically coloured account of what..he called ‘the Irish rebellion’.

1926 V. Sackville-West Let. 8 Feb. in Lett. to V. Woolf (1984) 88 The sun has come tropically out, and the clergymen have put on their sun-helmets.

1972 J. Aiken Butterfly Picnic x. 168 Tropically coloured heaps of beach clothes.

1994 Food & Wines from France (Sopexa) 21/1 (heading) Passion fruit juices blended impetuously with fine French cognac, at once tropically lush and seductively refreshing.

1906 A. J. Ewart tr. W. Pfeffer Physiol. Plants III. iii. 162 Sachs also incorrectly supposed that all tropically reacting dorsiventral organs [Ger. ein tropistisch reagirendes, dorsiventrales Organ] showed a plagiotropic orientation.

1964 Plant Physiol. 39 75/2 The chemotropic factor is widely distributed in plant tissues or else there are several factors to which pollen tubes can react tropically.

2003 M. S. McDonald Photobiol. Higher Plants viii. 285 Agar-diffusion studies with tropically stimulated coleoptiles show a differential of only 2:1 between the non-illuminated and the illuminated sides.