The words troche, trochee sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. Why do troche, trochee sound the same even though they are completely different words?
The answer is simple: troche, trochee are homophones of the English language.
A small, circular medicinal lozenge; a pastille.
A metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in season, or of a long syllable followed by a short syllable.
Definitions from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition and Wordnik.
Homophones (literally "same sound") are usually defined as words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of how they are spelled.
If they are spelled the same then they are also homographs (and homonyms); if they are spelled differently then they are also heterographs (literally "different writing").