trochee

How to use trochee in a sentence. Example sentences and definitions for trochee.

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Editorial note

If you write trochees as "- _" and dactyls as "- _ _", then yours is "- - _ _".

Examples7

Definitions1

Parts of speech1

Quick take

a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed syllables

Meaning at a glance

The clearest senses and uses of trochee gathered in one view.

noun

a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed syllables

Definitions

Core meanings and parts of speech for trochee.

noun

a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed syllables

Example sentences

If you write trochees as "- _" and dactyls as "- _ _", then yours is "- - _ _".

So a trochee in the first foot is very common.

Other feet can flip to become trochees too, but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others.

Because I can honestly say that I very well could have lived my life never having heard of the word 'trochees'.

Also in sonnets starting a line with trochee-iamb is so common you might want to accept that as metrical too. Does it use punctuation as hints?

~I am shocked--simply shocked--that poetic forms don't transfer cleanly across languages.~Iamb-out to declare that none of this really matters, trochee?

One of the questions that I could answer was to spot the odd one out in a list that looked something like: spondee, dactyl, trochee, ... If people have got worse at answering those two questions then I am not surprised.