Home › Glossary › Letter L

Lesbian dactyl

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

A dactylic pattern found in Lesbian lyric traditions like Sappho’s verse

Detailed Definition
Lesbian dactyl refers to a metrical foot—a dactyl (long-short-short in quantitative meter or stressed-unstressed-unstressed in accentual-syllabic)—used prominently in the Aeolic verse of Sappho from Lesbos; it contributes to the flowing, songlike quality of her fragments and influenced later lyric traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
A foot of quantitative verse (long-short-short or —), specifically associated with ancient Greek poetry from Lesbos (e.g., Sappho and Alcaeus); A metrical foot (—) used in conjunction with other feet to create Sapphic or Alcaic stanzas
Additional Notes
Lesbian dactyl: An informal or metaphorical term; a dactyl is a metrical foot (long−short−short or stressed−unstressed−unstressed); this term likely refers to a line of dactylic meter focused on lesbian themes.
Also Known As
Sapphic dactyl lesbian dactylic line Aeolic dactyl
Skip to main content