A scheme of repetition that brings the same word back through a sentence or passage — sometimes in a new form, sometimes in a shifted sense — to bind the thought together and drive the point home, as in the Rhetorica ad Herennium: "A person who has nothing more in life to be desired than life itself is incapable of cultivating a virtuous life." Roman handbooks treat it as a catch-all for word-repetition, which is why it overlaps with the narrower figures writers reach for today: ploce, antanaclasis, polyptoton, and diaphora. Knowing where traductio ends and those begin is most of what a working writer needs from the term.
Etymology
L. traductio "a leading across, transference" (Silva Rhetoricae).