In poetry, a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short syllables, the opposite pattern of a dactyl.
From anti- + dactyl. Dactyl comes from Greek 'daktylos' (finger), used because a finger has one long bone followed by two short ones. Antidactyl reverses this pattern metrically.
A dactyl sounds like 'DUM-da-da' (like a finger's bone structure), so an antidactyl is 'da-da-DUM'—poets use this pattern rarely, which is why it's called 'anti' or opposed to the normal dactyl!
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