Definition of "tropics"

tropics

noun
1. plural of tropic
noun
plural only
1. (geography) The region of the Earth centred on the equator and lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and characterized by a hot climate.
  Quotations
  The day was ending; night comes on very quickly in the tropics, and as yet there was no moon visible.
  1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 165
  ‘In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.’...He lifted a warning forefinger...‘Du calme, du calme.’
  1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], part I, page 201