Trochee


In poetic metre, a trochee, choree, or choreus, is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one, in English, or a heavy syllable followed by a light one in Latin or Greek. In this respect, a trochee is the reverse of an iamb.
The adjective form is trochaic. The English word trochee is itself trochaic since it is composed of the stressed syllable followed by the unstressed syllable.

Etymology

Trochee comes from French trochée, adapted from Latin trochaeus, originally from the Greek τροχός, "wheel", from the phrase trokhaios pous, literally "running foot"; it is connected with the word τρέχω trékhō, "I run". The less-often used word choree comes from χορός, khorós, "dance"; both convey the "rolling" rhythm of this metrical foot. The phrase was adapted into English in the late 16th century.
There was a well-established ancient tradition that trochaic rhythm is faster than iambic. When used in drama it is often associated with lively situations. One ancient commentator notes that it was named from the metaphor of people running and the Roman metrician Marius Victorinus notes that it was named from its running and speed.

Examples

Trochaic meter is sometimes seen among the works of William Shakespeare:
Perhaps owing to its simplicity, though, trochaic meter is fairly common in nursery rhymes:
Trochaic verse is also well known in Latin poetry, especially of the medieval period. Since the stress never falls on the final syllable in Medieval Latin, the language is ideal for trochaic verse. The dies irae of the Requiem mass is an example:
The Finnish national epic Kalevala, like much old Finnish poetry, is written in a variation of trochaic tetrameter.
Trochaic metre is popular in Polish and Czech literatures. Vitězslav Nezval's poem Edison is written in trochaic hexameter.
The Taylor Swift song "Blank Space" contains examples of trochaic metre in its chorus, which is responsible for many listeners mishearing part of the lyric as the line "Got a long list of ex-lovers" is forced into an unnatural shape to fit the stress pattern:
Where the stress would, in spoken English, naturally fall on the 'ex' of 'ex-lovers', it instead falls on 'of' and the first syllable of 'lovers', which can confuse on first hearing and cause the mind to try to fit an alternative two-syllable word into the 'of ex-' foot. Supposedly, the line is misheard as "All the lonely Starbucks lovers".

Latin

In Greek and Latin, the syllabic structure deals with long and short syllables, rather than accented and unaccented. Trochaic meter was rarely used by the Latin poets, except in certain passages of the tragedies and the comedies.