dactylus

[dak-tuh-luhs]

noun

plural

dactyli 

1. an enlarged portion of the leg after the first joint in some insects, as the pollen-carrying segment in the hind leg of certain bees.

Word History and Origins

Origin of dactylus¹

New Latin < Greek; dactyl

Example Sentences

There is the Pholas Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head.

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Since the diameter of a poppy-seed is not less than 1⁄40th of a dactylus, and spheres are to one another in the triplicate ratio of their diameters, a sphere of diameter 1 dactylus is not greater than 64,000 poppy-seeds, and, therefore, contains not more than 64,000 � 10,000 grains of sand, and a fortiori not more than 1,000,000,000, or 109 grains of sand.

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“Plurimum orantes decebit quando paene in ultimo Obtinet sedem beatam, terminet si clausulam Dactylus spondeus imam, nec trochaeum respuo; Plenius tractatur istud arte prosa rhetorum.”

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On the coasts of Malta, Sardinia, Italy, &c., they find a fish called the Dactylus, or Date, or Dale, because it resembles the palm-date in form; this first insinuates itself into the stone by a hole not bigger than the hole made by a needle.

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It has the shape of a date, or of a finger; whence its name of Dactylus, which in Greek signifies a finger.

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