Dactyl

A dactyl is a metrical unit of a poetic foot in poetry which is made up of one stressed (accented) syllable followed by two unstressed (unaccented) syllables. Lines of verse that are predominantly made up of dactyls are referred to as dactylic. For instance, a line consisting of five sets of dactyls would be considered to be in dactylic pentameter.

A few examples of dactylic words are:

• strawberry
• carefully
• changeable
• liberal
• merrily
• mannequin
• tenderly