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headless trochee

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A trochaic metrical foot that begins with a stressed syllable but is “headless,” lacking its initial unstressed syllable.

Detailed Definition
A headless trochee is a trochaic foot (DUM-da) that appears at the start of an otherwise iambic line, effectively “beheading” the expected initial unstressed syllable; this metrical inversion creates a strong, emphatic opening—common in Shakespearean drama or lyric poetry—to convey urgency, authority, or emotional intensity while maintaining the poem’s overall iambic framework.
Example
Example in poetry:
Headless trochee appears in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”: “To be, or not to be” (iambic, but headless trochee in “Not to be”); In Emily Dickinson: “Because I could not stop for Death”; In W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre”; In contemporary sonnets by Terrance Hayes, where first syllable is dropped for rhythmic variation.
Additional Notes
A trochaic foot (−∪) that is headless, meaning it is missing its initial stressed syllable (∪); this leaves a single unstressed syllable or can be seen as an iamb (∪−) in a predominantly trochaic line.
Also Known As
acephalous trochee truncated trochee headless trochee foot incomplete trochee Catalectic trochee
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