Trochee

Definition: Trochee

Trochee

Noun

1. A metrical unit with stressed-stressed-unstressed syllables.

Date "trochee" was first used: 1603. (references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Poetry	Verse, rhyme, assonance, crambo, meter, measure, foot, numbers, strain, rhythm; accentuation; (voice); dactyl, spondee, trochee, anapest; hexameter, pentameter; Alexandrine; anacrusis, antispast, blank verse, ictus.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. It consists of a long syllable followed by a short one.

Apart from the famous case of Longfellow's Hiawatha, this metre is rare in English verse, except with an extra long syllable added to each line, as in this example from Tennyson:

Go not, happy day,

From the shining fields;

Go not, happy day,

Till the maiden yields.

Perhaps owing to its simplicity, though, trochaic meter is fairly common in children's rhymes:

Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater

Had a wife and couldn't keep her.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

How I wonder where you are.

Often a few trochees will be interspersed among iambs in the same lines to develop a more complex or syncopated rhythm. Compare (William Blake):

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night

These lines are primarily trochaic, with the last syllable dropped so that the line ends with a stressed syllable to give a strong rhyme or masculine rhyme. By contrast, the intuitive way that the mind groups the syllables in later lines in the same poem makes them feel more like iambic lines with the first syllable dropped:

Did he smile his work to see?

In fact the surrounding lines by this point have become entirely iambic:

And when the stars threw down their spears

And watered Heaven with their tears

. . .

Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Crosswords: Trochee

English words defined with "trochee": Adonic, Adonic line ♦ Choree, Choriambus ♦ Ditrochee ♦ Priapean. (references)

Specialty definitions using "trochee": Hexameter Verse. (references)

Etymologies containing "trochee": Ditrochee. (references)

"Trochee" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Trochee" is used about 2 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	100%	2	245,945

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "trochee"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Bulgarian		хорей (choree, trochaics), трохей. (various references)

Czech		trochej. (various references)

French		trochée. (various references)

German		trochäus. (various references)

Greek		τροχαίοσ (vehicular). (various references)

Hungarian		trocheus (choree). (various references)

Italian		trocheo. (various references)

Pig Latin		ocheetray

Portuguese		troqueu, trocisco (troche). (various references)

Romanian		troheu. (various references)

Russian		хорей (choree), трохей (choree). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		trohej. (various references)

Spanish		troqueo. (various references)

Swedish		troke. (various references)

Ukrainian		трохей. (various references)

Vietnamese		thơ corê. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Language	Period	Translations
Greek	700 BCE-300 CE	trokhaios. (various references)
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	trochaeus. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Derivations
	Words beginning with "trochee": trochees. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Trochee" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Rochere, roochy, toche, torche, Torchie, torchy, Toshie, trache, Trichet, trichogen, trochae, trochar, trochlea, trochlear, Trockener, troke, Tronchet, Trophae, trophee, Trucchi, Trumhere. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

Words rhyming with "trochee" (pronounced 'Tro"chee'): Couchee. (additional references)

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "c-e-e-h-o-r-t"
	-1 letter: cheero, cohere, echoer, etcher, hector, hereto, hetero, reecho, rochet, rotche, tocher, troche.
	-2 letters: cheer, chert, chore, erect, ether, ocher, ochre, other, recto, retch, rotch, terce, there, three, throe, torch.
	-3 letters: cere, cero, cete, core, cote, eche, echo, etch, here, hero, hoer, rete, rote, thee, thro, torc, tore, tree.
	-4 letters: cee, cor, cot, ere, eth.
	Words containing the letters "c-e-e-h-o-r-t"
	+1 letter: coherent, comether, hectored, reclothe, tochered, torchere, trochees.
	+2 letters: brochette, cerecloth, comethers, crocheted, crocheter, ectotherm, heterotic, reclothed, reclothes, retouched, retoucher, retouches, theoretic, torcheres, tracheole, trochleae.
	+3 letters: botcheries, brochettes, cerecloths, charioteer, coherently, crocheters, ctenophore, ectotherms, exothermic, hectoliter, hectometer, helicopter, henceforth, heterocyst, hypocenter, incoherent, outreached, outreaches, retouchers, ricocheted, scouthered, spirochete, tachometer, threescore, tracheoles.
	+4 letters: archenteron, atherogenic, breechcloth, breechclout, charioteers, cherrystone, cholesteric, cholesterol, chronometer, coldhearted, ctenophores, ectothermic, endothermic, erythrocyte, hectoliters, hectometers, helicopters, heliometric, heteroclite, heterocycle, heterocysts, heteroecism, heterogonic, heterolytic, heterotopic, heterotypic, homestretch, hypocenters, kinetochore, nephrectomy, noncoherent, orchestrate, orthocenter, outpreached, outpreaches, overmatched, overmatches, overstretch, perchlorate, photoreduce, ricochetted, spirochaete, spirochetes, tachometers, thenceforth, theocentric, theocracies, theorematic, theoretical, thermocline, thermoscope, torchbearer, treacherous, truncheoned, unretouched, weathercock, xerothermic.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

Trochee

Definition: Trochee

Trochee

Noun

Synonyms within Context: Trochee

Poetry

Specialty Definition: Trochee

Crosswords: Trochee

Usage Frequency: Trochee

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Trochee

trochee

Modern Translation: Trochee

Bulgarian

Czech

French

German

Greek

Hungarian

Italian

Pig Latin

Portuguese

Romanian

Russian

Serbo-Croatian

Spanish

Swedish

Ukrainian

Vietnamese

Ancestral Language Translations: Trochee

Derivations & Misspellings: Trochee

Derivations

Misspellings

Rhyming with "Trochee"

Anagrams: Trochee

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

INDEX

Expression	Frequency per Day
trochee	3
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.