Dactyl (poetry)

A dactyl (/ˈdæktɪl/; Greek: δάκτυλος, dáktylos, “finger”) is a foot in poetic meter.

The best-known use of dactylic verse is in the epics attributed to the Greek poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Stephen Fry quotes Robert Browning's poem "The Lost Leader" as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive":[3] The first three feet in both lines are dactyls.

In the opening chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922), a character quips that his name is "absurd": "Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls" (Mal-i-chi Mull-i-gan).

[4] Recent dactylic poems in the meter online include "Moon for Our Daughters" and "Love in the Morning" by Annie Finch,[5][6] and "Song of the Powers" by David Mason[7] A contemporary use in popular music is "Hollywood Nights" by Bob Seger, which alternates between dactylic pentameter (albeit with an extra syllable, or hypercatalexis), followed by a line in dactylic tetrameter:

A dactyl is like a finger, having one long part followed by two short stretches.