Home › Glossary › Letter D

Dactylic verse

Meter
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

Poetry composed primarily in dactyls, the long-short-short metrical pattern

Detailed Definition
Dactylic verse is poetry composed primarily in dactylic meter—each foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (e.g., “mer-rily”); though rare in English due to linguistic stress patterns, it appears in hymns (“Gloria in excelsis Deo”) and evokes solemnity or processional grandeur.
Example
Example in poetry:
Long runs of dactylic hexameter: “Arma virumque cano”; English approximations of classical meter; Byron imitating Horace; Swinburne’s galloping stanzas.
Additional Notes
Dactylic verse uses dactyls (– u u) as the dominant foot; common in classical epics, it produces a galloping or rolling rhythm.
Also Known As
Falling verse Triple-meter poetry Three-syllable foot verse Descending rhythm poetry Dactylic
Skip to main content