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Dactyl

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A metrical foot of one stressed followed by two unstressed syllables (– ◡ ◡).

Explore this topic in depth (2)

How to Scan a Poem — Scansion is the practice of listening closely to a poem’s rhythm and marking its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. It is not a way of forcing every line into a formula, but a method for hearing how regularity, variation and natural speech work together.

Metre and Rhythm — Metre gives poetry an underlying pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables; rhythm is the living sound that results when a person reads it. Learn to hear the beat before naming it, and to notice how poets use regularity and variation to make language move.

Detailed Definition
A dactyl is a metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed (–uu), creating a falling rhythm; prominent in classical hexameter (Homer, Virgil) and English narrative verse (Longfellow’s Evangeline), it evokes grandeur or swiftness.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dactyl appears in Longfellow’s “Evangeline”: “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks”; In Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “Cannon to right of them, / Cannon to left of them”; Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” uses dactylic waves for elegiac rhythm; Modern poet Annie Finch uses dactyls in “Calendars” for ritual cadence; In “The Raven,” Poe’s “Once upon a midnight dreary” opens with dactylic meter.
Additional Notes
Dactyl is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (e.g., "merrily"); common in classical Greek and Latin poetry and occasionally used in English for galloping rhythms (e.g., Longfellow’s "Evangeline").
Also Known As
Three-syllable foot Long-short-short measure Falling trisyllabic foot Heroic meter unit
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