dactyl

Other forms of dactyl

plural

dactyls·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about dactyl

What does dactyl mean?

dactyl means "a metrical unit with stressed-unstressed-unstressed syllables". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in dactyl?

dactyl has 2 syllables: dac-tyl. The stress falls on "dac". In IPA it is /ˈdæktɪl/.

What is another word for dactyl?

Close synonyms include digit. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dactyl a common word?

dactyl is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.