Words & WritingGreek → English
Trochee
/ˈtroʊkiː/noun
A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed.
The Greek roots
τροχαῖος
trokhaîos
running, tripping
τρέχω
trékhō
to run
Literally: “the running foot”
The story of the word
Greek metricians named it for its pace: τροχαῖος means running, and the foot was felt to move quickly, unlike the marching iamb it reverses. The same verb gives τροχός, a wheel, which is where trochlea and truck-adjacent words come from. English trochaic verse arrives with a beat you cannot ignore, which is why Longfellow used it for the whole of Hiawatha and why so many charms and chants fall into it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
iambtrochaictrochleadactyl
In a sentence
Read the line again and you can hear the trochee driving it, hard syllable first every time.