dactylus

dactylus (plural dactyli)

1. Synonym of dactyl (“type of metrical foot”)
2. (marine biology) The tip of a cephalopod's tentacle club
   • 1982 April, Clyde F.E. Roper, Kenneth J. Boss, “The Giant Squid”, in Scientific American, volume 246, number 4, →JSTOR, pages 96–105:

     The distal end of the club, the dactylus (finger), is pointed and attenuated but is covered with hundreds of small suckers.

   • 2001 June, N. Neethiselvan, “A new species of cuttlefish Sepia ramani sp. nov. (Class: Cephalopoda) from Tuticorin Bay, southeast coast of India”, in Indian Journal of Marine Sciences, volume 30, number 2, pages 81–86:

     […] suckers of carpus and dactylus portions small […]

3. (carcinology) The tip of a crustacean's leg
   • 1975 November, Takahiro Fujino, “Fine features of the dactylus of the ambulatory pereiopods in a bivalve-associated shrimp, Anschistus miersi (De Man), under the scanning electron microscope (Decapoda, Natantia, Pontoniinae)”, in Crustaceana, volume 29, number 3, →DOI, pages 252–254:

     The tip of the dactylus is short and hooked, with a scoop-shaped depression on the anterior surface.

   • 2001 April, Charles Oliver Coleman, Ines Jäger, “Acanthonotozomella rauscherti (Amphipoda, Acanthonotozomellidae), a new species from the Antarctic Ocean”, in Journal of Crustacean Biology, volume 21, number 2, →DOI, pages 475–483:

     Pereiopod 1 […] dactylus with 3 pointed processes on posterior margin (Fig. 2g).

• daktylus (superseded)

Borrowed from Latin dactylus, from Ancient Greek δάκτυλος (dáktulos).

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɑk.ti.lʏs/

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• Hyphenation: dac‧ty‧lus

dactylus m (plural dactyli or dactylen)

1. (poetry) dactyl

• dactylisch

Borrowed from Ancient Greek δάκτυλος (dáktulos, “a finger, a dactyl”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈdak.ty.lus/, [ˈd̪äkt̪ʏɫ̪ʊs̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈdak.ti.lus/, [ˈd̪äkt̪ilus]

dactylus m (genitive dactylī); second declension

1. a sort of muscle
2. a kind of grape
3. a sort of grass
4. a precious stone
5. the date
6. (poetry) a dactyl (¯ ˘ ˘), one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented; this came to be in an allusion to the three joints of the finger

Second-declension noun.

• (kind of grape): dactylis

dactylus (feminine dactyla, neuter dactylum); first/second-declension adjective

1. (New Latin) finger-like; fingered.

First/second-declension adjective.

• Translingual: Grapholita dactyla, Lepanthes dactyla, Porroglossum dactylum

• “dactylus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “dactylus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• dactylus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “dactylus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “dactylus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin