Word.ws English Dictionary

dactyli

dactyli is the plural of dactylus.

Meaning of dactylus

Noun

dactylus (plural dactyli)

  1. Synonym of dactyl (“type of metrical foot”).
    Synonyms:
    dactyl
  2. (marine biology) The tip of a cephalopod's tentacle club.
    • The distal end of the club, the dactylus (finger), is pointed and attenuated but is covered with hundreds of small suckers.1982 April, Clyde F.E. Roper, Kenneth J. Boss, “The Giant Squid”, in Scientific American, volume 246, number 4, →JSTOR, pages 96–105
  3. The tip of a crustacean's leg.
    • The tip of the dactylus is short and hooked, with a scoop-shaped depression on the anterior surface.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...

Questions about dactyli

What is dactyli the plural of?
Dactyli is the plural of dactylus.

Words near dactyli in the dictionary

  1. dactylectomies
  2. dactylectomy
  3. dactyles
  4. dactylethra
  5. dactylethrae
  6. dactyli
  7. dactylic
  8. dactylically
  9. dactylics
  10. dactylies
  11. dactyliferous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dactyli (page history and authors); dactylus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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