lovenote: trochees
I had a teacher in high school who said that meter was the tightest security measure a writer can take to lock their heartbeat into their words once they’re on the page.
I imagine her sending a piece of written work off the way parents wave goodbye to their kids in a Subaru commercial, feeling as safe as she could. I don’t always want to tuck you into a Subaru, reader; I trust you, and would trust you in one of those jeeps that don’t have doors, I would trust you in a Ford Pinto bent on exploding when rear-ended, I’d trust you in one of those cars made out of vegetables in a middle school science class. You (hopefully) feel like you know me by now, and I know you are not unreasonably reckless. I trust you.
However.
In spite of all the trust I have in you, my friend, to preserve my voice as you peruse these essays, there is one sweet security measure I can’t resist: the trochee.
Glad you asked.
A trochee is a “foot,” or a unit of meter, which consists of two syllables: first, a long or stressed one, and then a short or unstressed one. The application of pressure only for the bestowal of release. I enjoy the fact that a word, even divorced from meaning or context, can deliver such respite. They are marked on a page with a swoopy shape overhead that looks like a face beginning to smile! The shape itself is a trochee, beginning with a deliberate start downwards (the application of pressure) before getting launched aimlessly upwards (sweet release!). Sometimes, the made-up rules of grammar and language are used purely for good! Right?
My trust is not so easily granted: if I am to defend my putting a leash on you, reader, linguistically speaking, I must be sure it is worth it.
In my journey to the center of my trochee infatuation, I came across another word: “troche,” spelled just like that, with just one “e”. It comes from the French which comes from the Latin which comes from the Greek word “trokhiskos,” which means “a little wheel,” which comes from an idiom which means “running foot”. It refers to what was described to me as “a small medicated lozenge designed to dissolve so as to soothe”.
It is my belief that “troche” and “trochee” have a good deal in common beyond the first six letters; the utility of both words seems very much the same to me. “To dissolve so as to soothe”. To put the unchewable thing in your mouth only to be eased by how simply it shrinks, melts, drips, and yes, soothes as it does. Even beyond meaning, the things that go into a cough drop: honey, sugar, lemon, ginger- the conditions that necessitate it: coughing, illness, fever, dryness- a troche comprised of trochees. In moments such as these, when a word acts as a Russian stacking doll, it seems to me that all the world is conspiring together to deliver total bliss.
The trochees I was after initially, the word kind, are also known to a smaller crowd of etymologists as “chorees”. “Choree” comes from the word which means “dance”. Whether running or dancing, linguists agree that these words have natural momentum, more so than iambs (a foot of meter which goes in the opposite order, unstressed syllable to stressed syllable), granting them a place in the livelier scenes of metered drama. These words include all gerunds, words of perpetual action! Trembling, fleeing, leaping, seizing. This association also gave the words a strong presence in fairy tales- (humpty dumpty, for instance— who, even when sitting, is bursting with potential energy) as well as by the mystical creatures of Shakespeare’s world (Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends the show by saying “if we shadows have offended/ think but this and all is mended…”, and the Weird Sisters in Macbeth begin their incantation with “double double, toil and trouble/ fire burn and cauldron bubble”) Trochees, it was felt, offer a feeling of easy mobility; they take you along for the ride, and the ride is pleasant.
They also get as much action as they do in fairy tales and the like because they were common features of Latin poetry, which was foundational material for most of the poems we have now. The reason for this is that in Latin, the last syllable is never stressed1. How fancy-free they must’ve been!
What I am excited about here is a matter of taste. I will remind you that my name is (nearly2) two trochees, and I must therefore hear all trochees as reminders of my place on the planet and my ability to be a figure in someone else’s life. My existence as someone to be referred to. Sweetly.
But can you blame me? How, for example, could I not feel cradled by Joni Mitchell? By going walking with a lover? By cozy sweaters, farmer’s markets, blooming gardens? My mother, father, sister, brothers, friendships? My dog, Tucker, or my cat, Cricket? I am faced with a real chicken and egg situation. Ha. Chicken.
Sometimes, I will admit, trochees let me down. They can contain the meanings of hatred, sickness, global warming. They can be sour, bitter, spoiled, bratty bullies! To me, these words and words like them are real wolves in the fuzziest sheep-suits you ever did see. Words are like that. They have been manipulated, made inseparable from the notable instances when they have been used and misused. To use a word that has been famously used by someone before you is to invite their voice into your throat, even if only for a moment. Language is under a lot of pressure this way. Words have been celebritized, which is a word I have made up. Making words up is the only way to ensure you are not suggesting anything other than precisely what you mean. I would like to make a rule that nobody may use a trochee for anything other than gentleness and decency, but then, that is my belief of the intended use of all new inventions. Maybe I’m being simplistic. Maybe, in the same breath, I’m overcomplicating things, vesting a melodic phrase with too much meaning, and hurting my own feelings when the association proves imperfect.
I have mentioned to you my complicated relationship with words. They get me jazzed, but they are inherently, unavoidably disappointing. Words can only get as close to meaning as humans can to touching- that is, they can put on a convincing show, but in truth, the answer is “not very”. Isn’t distance tragic?
My love for trochees has them self-emancipated from any desire for meaning. The effect of the rhythm is meaning enough. The Romans had it right in one way- trochees certainly are dripping with motion. The activity of putting something heavy down. Of the final push and the big release. Of getting a treat, getting something in the mail. Trochees are the dog waiting by the door for you to come home, and nearly peeing with excitement when you finally do. Trochees are big on rewards. They are also full of mystery- where do they go? They somehow both vanish and echo endlessly. They shatter off of lips and teeth into nothing. They are ghostly, yearning, fleeting, almost finished.
Some words get tricky. It becomes a matter of pronunciation. For instance, “adult”. Some find the trochee in the word; I find that those who say it this way seem to fit the meaning of the word themselves. They relieve the pressure at the end, as if to say “it’s no big deal, look at me, I’m already doing it!”. I myself say it as an iamb, so it only gains pressure as it goes. My “adult” is a child throwing a temper tantrum because she does not want to put on her nice clothes and go to the boring restaurant with her parents’ friends. This makes more sense to me.
It’s possible I am tricking myself into finding meaning where there is none. Such is my wont, evidently. But I like at least imagining that this meaning is there. That at the ongoing conference of Which Words are Words and What Do They Mean, someone is sitting in the corner with a clipboard asking to move that all trochees be used for goodness, just for the sake of goodness. A cough-drop, in truth, does little more than taste sweet.
LOVENOTES WEEK TWOOooOooOoOOooo playlist
(cover art is thanks to the unmatched kindness and talent of Mckayla Witt):
I know this because I took Latin for five years! I took Latin for one year because I was interested in etymology, which was what the first year focused on, and for the next four because I can be bad at quitting things that make me unhappy.
Thanks for that one, Elizabeth
Beautiful work as always!