δάκτυλος

Ancient Greek

Etymology

Uncertain. Possibly related to Latin digitus. Probably Pre-Greek. Note Boeotian Greek δακκύλιος (dakkúlios). The sense "date" is probably a folk-etymological alteration of a word from a Semitic source such as Arabic دَقَل (daqal, “variety of date palm”) or Hebrew דֶּקֶל (deqel, “date palm”).

Pronunciation

Noun

δᾰ́κτῠλος • (dáktulos) m (genitive δᾰκτῠ́λου); second declension

1. finger
   1. toe
2. measure of length, the breadth of a finger, about 7/10 of an inch
   1. dactyl, a metrical foot
   2. (in the plural) a dance
3. date (fruit)
4. type of grape

Declension

Derived terms

Descendants

• English: dactyl, dactylo-
• French: dactyle
• Greek: δάχτυλο (dáchtylo)
• Russian: да́ктиль (dáktilʹ)

Further reading

• “δάκτυλος”, in Liddell & Scott (1940) A Greek–English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “δάκτυλος”, in Liddell & Scott (1889) An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon, New York: Harper & Brothers
• δάκτυλος in Bailly, Anatole (1935) Le Grand Bailly: Dictionnaire grec-français, Paris: Hachette
• Bauer, Walter et al. (2001) A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Third edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• δάκτυλος in the Diccionario Griego–Español en línea (2006–2024)
• G1147 in Strong, James (1979) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible
• Woodhouse, S. C. (1910) English–Greek Dictionary: A Vocabulary of the Attic Language‎, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited.
  • dactyl idem, page 193.
  • finger idem, page 321.
  • inch idem, page 428.
  • toe idem, page 880.
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010) Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 10), with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN