A dactyl is not a dinosaur - but "dinosaur" is a dactyl!
A
dactyl is a metric foot in poetry that is one stressed syllable
followed by two unstressed syllables. You could also think of this like a
musical triplet.
Some words that are dactylic all by themselves are:
Endlessly
Cabbages
Murmuring
President
Mockingbird
Hamilton
... and...
You guessed it: Dinosaur.
Take a look at these dactylic lines of verse, where I've shown the line first as it would appear in a script, followed by how I would scan it:
Julia (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain
TRAMP-ling con-TEMP-tous-ly ON thy dis DAIN
*Pronounce "contemptuously" con - TEMP - chuss - lee to keep it four syllables.
Titania (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
I am a spirit of no common rate
I am a SPI-rit of NO com-mon RATE
Claudius (Hamlet)
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
MAD-ness in GREAT ones must NOT un-watch'd GO.
There is usually more than one way to scan a line of verse. A lot of people would make Titania's line perfect iambic pentameter:
i AM a SPI-rit OF no COM-mon RATE
And
while that is completely acceptable, I really like the choice of
dactyls for this line. Midsummer is a play that is largely in perfect iambic pentameter, so looking for opportunities to utilize other rhythms
and shake it up is a good idea. This is especially powerful here, where
Titania might be showing her magical abilities to impress
Bottom, who is trying to escape the woods while she is willing him to stay.
Making
Julia's line dactylic can help to emphasize the physical action of her
stomping all over the torn pieces of the letter she has received. Also,
attempting to make this line perfect iambic pentameter sounds really
strange:
tramp-LING con-TEMP-tous-LY on THY dis-DAIN
Nope. It's weird. So is Claudius' line:
mad-NESS in GREAT ones MUST not UN-watch'd GO.
Dactyls
are pretty frequent in Shakespeare's verse, so when you see a line that
can't be perfect iambic pentameter, check to see if it could be
dactylic instead!
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