Intervocal Latin shifted regularly to in Occitan (cf. In turn, the Latin word derives ultimately from Greek τρόπος ( trópos), meaning "turn, manner". This reconstructed form is based on the Latin root tropus, meaning a trope. Trobar may come, in turn, from the hypothetical Late Latin * tropāre "to compose, to invent a poem" by regular phonetic change. It is the oblique case of the nominative trobaire "composer", related to trobar "to compose, to discuss, to invent" ( Wace, Brut, editions I.
The French word itself is borrowed from the Occitan trobador. The first use and earliest form of troubador is trobadors, found in a 12th-century Occitan text by Cercamon. The English word troubadour was borrowed from the French word first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean "langue d'oc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century" ( Jean de Nostredame, Vies des anciens Poètes provençaux, p. 14 in Gdf. Likewise there were many genres, the most popular being the canso, but sirventes and tensos were especially popular in the post-classical period. Works can be grouped into three styles: the trobar leu (light), trobar ric (rich), and trobar clus (closed). Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. After the "classical" period around the turn of the 13th century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and around the time of the Black Death (1348) it died out. Dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction.
Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread to the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas. Since the word troubadour is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz. A troubadour ( English: / ˈ t r uː b ə d ʊər, - d ɔːr/, French: ( listen) Occitan: trobador ( listen)) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350).