: a metrical foot consisting of one long and two short syllables or of one stressed and two unstressed syllables (as in tenderly)
Examples of dactyl in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Evan Ackerman, IEEE Spectrum, 2 June 2023
Poems of the Week is this double dactyl by one of the legends of The Style Invitational, Brendan Beary, of the 1,084 blots of Invite ink and 39 outright wins, commemorating what might have been the most famous animal in the United States for a few days.
—Washington Post, 15 Oct. 2020
This week: Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2021, as in the double dactyl above by Lover of Baseball, Double Dactyls and Bad Language Gene Weingarten.
—Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2021
This was the tack taken by Gene Weingarten in today’s example, a double dactyl about the famously profane Tommy Lasorda.
—Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2021
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Noun
Crablike dactyl designs enable robots to achieve this anchoring behavior while still being lightweight enough to walk on dry sand.
—Evan Ackerman, IEEE Spectrum, 2 June 2023
Poems of the Week is this double dactyl by one of the legends of The Style Invitational, Brendan Beary, of the 1,084 blots of Invite ink and 39 outright wins, commemorating what might have been the most famous animal in the United States for a few days.
—Washington Post, 15 Oct. 2020
This week: Write a poem of no longer than eight lines (plus an optional title) about someone who died in 2021, as in the double dactyl above by Lover of Baseball, Double Dactyls and Bad Language Gene Weingarten.
—Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2021
This was the tack taken by Gene Weingarten in today’s example, a double dactyl about the famously profane Tommy Lasorda.
—Washington Post, 30 Dec. 2021
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Cite this Entry
“Dactyl.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dactyl. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
dactyl
noun
dac·tyl
ˈdak-tᵊl 
: a metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables (as in tenderly)
Medical Definition
dactyl
noun
dac·tyl
ˈdak-tᵊl
: a finger or toe
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