dactyl

Note: The metrical foot is so called because the first of the three syllables is the longest, as in the joints of a finger. The sense "date" of the Greek word may depend on a Semitic source (compare Aramaic diqlā "date palm," from which Maghribi Arabic daqal "kind of date," post-biblical Hebrew deqel "palm tree" may have been borrowed), accommodated to dáktylos "digit" by folk etymology. P. Chantraine (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque) alludes to a proposed connection between dáktylos and the Germanic verb represented by Old Norse taka "to seize, grasp," Gothic tekan "to touch," though the etymology of this verb and its possible Indo-European congeners is problematic (see take entry 1). The Boeotian variant dakkýlios of daktýlios "finger ring" implies an original form *datkylos, which, with the *-tk- cluster and *-yl- suffix, would make it of pre-Greek substratal origin according to R. Beekes (Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009). Compare digit, toe entry 1.