dactyl, a metrical unit ( foot) of verse, having one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in the word carefully (or, in quantitative verse, one long syllable and two short ones). Dactylic hexameters were used in Greek and Latin epic poetry, and in the elegiac distich, but dactylic verse is rare in English: Tennyson's ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ uses it, as does Thomas Hardy's ‘The Voice’, which begins
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to meSee also falling rhythm, metre, triple metre .
