Daktylos

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A metric foot in poetry consisting of two syllables
2. the term used to describe a rhythm of one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable
3. a specific pattern that creates a musical quality through its repetitiveness

Etymology: The Greek word "daktylos" meant "finger," and the metrical sense comes from the finger's three segments: one long bone followed by two shorter ones. Ancient Greek poets heard that pattern in verse, a long syllable followed by two short ones, and named the foot after the jointed finger. The word passed into Latin as "dactylus," and from there into English. The metrical foot is a long-short-short unit in classical quantitative verse, which is the sense the Greek and Latin terms carry. The English usage described here, one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed, is a stress-based adaptation of the same name, since English verse runs on stress rather than syllable length. The image of the finger stays intact across both systems.

Synonyms: dactyl