\Trou"ba*dour`\, n. [F. troubadour, fr. Pr. trobador,
(assumed) LL. tropator a singer, tropare to sing, fr. tropus
a kind of singing, a melody, song, L. tropus a trope, a song,
Gr. ? a turn, way, manner, particular mode in music, a trope.
See {Trope}, and cf. {Trouv?re}.]
One of a school of poets who flourished from the eleventh to
the thirteenth century, principally in Provence, in the south
of France, and also in the north of Italy. They invented, and
especially cultivated, a kind of lyrical poetry characterized
by intricacy of meter and rhyme, and usually of a romantic,
amatory strain.