Trochee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,

Here's a bit of general invective, from the people whom I often tend to borrow.

A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. Trochee comes from the Greek τροχός, trokhós, wheel, and choree from χορός, khorós, dance; both convey the "rolling" rhythm of this metrical foot.

Uh. Uh. That maketh perfect sense, does it not? Now try this on for size.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha is written almost entirely in trochees, barring the occasional substitution (iamb, spondee, pyrrhic, etc.).

Should you ask me, whence these stories?

Whence these legends and traditions,

With the odours of the forest,

With the dew and damp of meadows,

In the second line, "and tra-" is a Pyrrhic substitution, as are "With the" in the third and fourth lines, and "of the" in the third. Even so, the dominant foot throughout the poem is the trochee.


Pyrrhic? That sounds like either a gastric condition of a chemical composite. Much WTFness, as often said by THE India Uncut writer. I'll let you figure that one out.