trophy [LME] Both tropic [LME] and trophy are ultimately from Greek trepein ‘to turn, put to flight’. In ancient Greece and Rome a trophy was a pile of the weapons of a defeated army set up as a memorial of a victory. The attractive young trophy wife of a successful older man, is a term first used in the late 1970s. A tropic is a ‘turning point’ in the sun’s apparent path through the sky. The tropics, for the areas between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, is found from the late 16th century.