Trochee

The trochee is a disyllabic foot with the stress on the first syllable (—U), the opposite of the iamb in the placement of the strong position. Trochaic rhythm is often perceived as more springy, song-like and mobile, and therefore gravitates toward folk, dance and children's genres as well as toward emotionally elevated lyric. Much folk-song stylisation is written in trochaic tetrameter; this measure was used widely by Taras Shevchenko, who gave it a deep national resonance. Like the iamb, the actual trochee admits pyrrhics — omissions of metrical stresses that diversify the rhythmic pattern and prevent the monotony of scansion.