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/dˈæktɪl/ Listen

noun

dactyl n.

(Pros.) A poetical foot of three sylables, one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented; as, E. merciful; so called from the similarity of its arrangement to that of the joints of a finger. (Written also dactyle)

(Zool.)

(a)

A finger or toe; a digit.

(b)

The claw or terminal joint of a leg of an insect or crustacean.

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Etymology of 'Dactyl'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Dactyl" Quotes from Famous Books

... their trained ears so different that it can be recognized at once. The rhythms are varied by the number of beats of the right hand to one of the left, and by the different degrees of speed with which the tune is played. The general beat may be compared to the dactyl of ancient Greek and Roman versification. The left hand plays the long syllable, if we may so speak, while the right plays the two short ones. The combinations, however, are as intricate as the ...

— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... be substituted for another and not make the rhythm feel irregular. So long as the accent is not changed from the first syllable to the last, or from the last to the first, there is no jar in the flow of the lines. The trochee and the dactyl are interchangeable; and the iambus ...

— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... verse. Had he been so, Eustathius, an excellent critic and warm admirer of HOMER, had never affirmed, that some of his lines want a head, some a tail, and others a middle. Some begin with a word that is neither dactyl nor spondee, some conclude with a dactyl, and in the intermediate part he sometimes deviates equally from the established custom. I confess that instances of this sort are rare; but they are surely, though few, sufficient ...

— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... are to a constable as a plot of cabbages or a radish bed to the garden of the Louvre. What matters it, after all? human life, for the great as well as for us, is a mixture of good and evil. Pain is always by the side of joy, the spondee by the dactyl.—Master, I must relate to you the history of the Barbeau mansion. It ends in tragic fashion. It was in 1319, in the reign of Philippe V., the longest reign of the kings of France. The moral of the story is that the temptations of the flesh are pernicious ...

— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo