trochee

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin trochaeus (“a trochee”) according to the OED, Collins and the Shorter Oxford,^[2][3][4] and the American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Unabridged, Etymonline and Barnhart take it through French trochée, which the OED dates to 1572.^{[5][6][7][8][2]} The Latin word is from Ancient Greek τροχαῖος (trokhaîos, “running, tripping”), properly an adjective used with πούς (poús, “foot”),^[2][4][9] from τρόχος (trókhos, “a running, course”),^[2][10] from τρέχω (trékhō, “to run”).^[2][5][10] Barnhart traces the verb to Proto-Indo-European *dhregh-,^[8] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged compares Old Irish droch (“wheel”) and Lithuanian drožti (“to run quickly”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The OED's first record is in Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), where the word stands for a tribrach, a sense not found again.^[2] The usual sense, a long syllable followed by a short one, is first recorded in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie (1589),^[2] in the Latinate form trocheus, according to Barnhart.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The name describes the movement of the verse: the "running" or "tripping" foot.^[2][7] Etymonline adds that this rapid movement made it suitable for dances.^[7] Johnson (1755) still described it as a foot of Latin poetry, long and then short.^[11] In accentual verse the word was applied to a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.^[2][6][4] Etymonline quotes George Saintsbury's History of English Prosody (1908), which calls the English trochee "rather an uncanny foot".^[7]

Timeline

• 1586 – a tribrach, in Webbe (rare and obsolete).^[2]
• 1589 – a metrical foot of a long syllable followed by a short one, in Puttenham.^[2][8] Etymonline dates the word to the 1580s.^[7]
• 1603 – the spelling trochie.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. In prosody, a metrical foot of two syllables, the first long and the second short, or in accentual verse the first stressed and the second unstressed; also called a choree.^[3][6][2]

Related words

• trochaic
• truckle

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.