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. Trouvre.]
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.
© Webster 1913.