What is "dactyl"

dactyl \dac"tyl\ (d[a^]k"t[i^]l), n. [L. dactylus, Gr. da`ktylos a finger, a dactyl. Cf. Digit.]

1. (Pros.) A poetical foot of three sylables (
   --- [crescent] [crescent]), one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented; as, L. t["e]gm[i^]n[e^], E. mer"ciful; -- so called from the similarity of its arrangement to that of the joints of a finger. [Written also dactyle.]

2. (Zo["o]l.)

   1. A finger or toe; a digit.

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

metrical foot, late 14c., from Greek dactylos, literally "finger" (also "toe"), which is of unknown origin; the metrical use (a long syllable followed by two short ones) is by analogy with the three joints of a finger.

n. A poetical foot of three syllables (— ~ ~), one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented.

1. n. a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed-unstressed syllables

2. a finger or toe in human beings or corresponding part in other vertebrates [syn: digit]

Dactyl may refer to:

• Dactyl (mythology), a legendary being
• Dactyl (poetry), a metrical unit of verse
• Dactyl Foundation, an arts organization
• Finger, a part of the hand
• Dactylus, part of a decapod crustacean
• A moon of asteroid 243 Ida
• "-dactyl", a suffix used in taxonomy

In Greek mythology, the Dactyls (pronounced []; from Greek Δάκτυλοι " fingers") were the archaic mythical race of male beings associated with the Great Mother, whether as Cybele or Rhea. Their numbers vary, but often they were ten spirit-men so like the three Curetes, the Cabiri or the Korybantes that they were often interchangeable. The Dactyls were both ancient smiths and healing magicians. In some myths, they are in Hephaestus' employ, and they taught metalworking, mathematics, and the alphabet to humans.

When Rhea, the mother of the gods, knew her time of delivery was come, she went to the sacred cave on Mount Ida. As she squatted in labor she dug her fingers into the earth ( Gaia), which brought forth these daktyloi Idaioi (Δάκτυλοι Ἰδαῖοι "Idaean fingers"), thus often ten in number, or sometimes multiplied into a race of ten tens. Three is just as often given as their number. They are sometimes instead numbered as thirty-three.

When Greeks offered a most solemn oath, often they would press their hands against the earth as they uttered it.

A dactyl (, dáktylos, “finger”) is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, often used in Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. In accentual verse, often used in English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapaest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

The Greek and Latin words δάκτυλος and dactylus are themselves dactyls (and hence autological). The English word poetry is also a dactyl. A useful mnemonic for remembering this long-short-short pattern is to consider the relative lengths of the three bones of a human finger: beginning at the knuckle, it is one long bone followed by two shorter ones (hence the name dactyl).

An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter:

The first five feet of the line are dactyls; the sixth a trochee.

Stephen Fry quotes Robert Browning's The Lost Leader as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive":

The first three feet in both lines are dactyls.

Another example: the opening lines of Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (1859), his poem about the birth of his poetic voice:
: Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking [a dactyl, followed by a trochee ('cradle'); then another dactyl followed by a trochee ('rocking')]

The dactyl "out of the..." becomes a pulse that rides through the entire poem, often generating the beginning of each new line, even though the poem as a whole, as is typical for Whitman, is extremely varied and "free" in its use of metrical feet.

Dactyls are the metrical foot of Greek elegiac poetry, which followed a line of dactylic hexameter with dactylic pentameter.