troubadour: [18] A troubadour is etymologically someone who ‘finds’ – that is, ‘composes’ – songs. The word comes via French troubadour from Provençal trobador, a derivative of the verb trobar (whose modern French equivalent is trouver). This seems originally to have meant ‘compose’, and later to have shifted its semantic ground via ‘invent’ to ‘find’.
It is not known for certain where it came from, but one theory traces it back via a Vulgar Latin *tropāre to Latin tropus ‘figure of speech’ (source of English trope [16]). This in turn was borrowed from Greek trópos ‘turn’, a relative of English trophy and tropic. If this is so, its ancestral meaning would be ‘use figures of speech’. => tropic
troubadour (n.)
1727, from French troubadour (16c.) "one of a class of lyric poets in southern France, eastern Spain, and northern Italy 11c.-13c.," from Old Provençal trobador, from trobar "to find," earlier "invent a song, compose in verse," perhaps from Vulgar Latin *tropare "compose, sing," especially in the form of tropes, from Latin tropus "a song" (see trope). The alternative theory among French etymologists derives the Old Provençal word from a metathesis of Latin turbare "to disturb," via a sense of "to turn up." Meanwhile, Arabists posit an origin in Arabic taraba "to sing." General sense of "one who composes or sings verses or ballads" first recorded 1826.
