dactyl

plural dactyls · alternative dactyle · alternative dactile

1. human sciencesA metrical foot of three syllables of the shape | – ⏖ |

   —My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it?

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 4

   1 more example

   Now the Bard, glad to get an audience, […] / stuck fast with his first hexameter, / Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir. // But ere the spavin'd dactyls could be spurr'd / Into recitative, in great dismay / Both cherubim and seraphim were heard / To murmur loudly through their long array; […]

   1822 October 15, Quevedo Redivivus [pseudonym; Lord Byron], “The Vision of Judgment”, in The Liberal. Verse and Prose from the South, 2nd edition, volume I, number I, London: […] John Hunt, […], published 1823, →OCLC, stanzas XC–XCI, page 33

2. A metrical foot of three syllables of the shape | – ⏖ |:
   1. human sciencesIn qualitative metre, a foot with a stressed first syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
   2. human sciencesIn quantitative metre, a foot with a long first syllable followed by two short syllables.
   3. transferred sensehuman sciencesAn excerpt of poetry or verse using this metre.