1. a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
Usage: poetry; prosody
2. a finger or toe
Usage: anatomy; technical

Examples

• The word ‘beautiful’ contains a dactyl with the stress on ‘beau’.
• Poetry written in dactylic hexameter was common in ancient Greek and Latin verse.
• The dactyl creates a falling rhythm in the line of poetry.
• Each dactyl in the meter follows the pattern of long-short-short.
• The anatomist examined each dactyl for signs of injury.
• Birds have varying numbers of dactyls depending on their species.