A dactyl is a term used in formal English poetry to describe a trisyllablic metrical foot made up of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones. Matador, realize, cereal and limerick as well as the word poetry itself are examples of words that are themselves dactyls. A double dactyl can therefore simply mean two consecutive dactyls.
A double dactyl is also a verse form, also known as "higgledy piggledy", purportedly[1] invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1961, but having a history as a parlor word game earlier in the century. Like a limerick, it has a rigid structure and is usually humorous, but the double dactyl is considerably more rigid and difficult to write. There must be two stanzas, each comprising three lines of dactylic dimeter followed by a line with a dactyl and a single accent. The two stanzas have to rhyme on their last line. The first line of the first stanza is repetitive nonsense. The second line of the first stanza is the subject of the poem, a proper noun (marked in these examples with a single asterisk, *, or where not exactly a proper name with a parenthesized asterisk (*)). Note that this name must itself be double-dactylic. There is also a requirement for at least one line of the second stanza to be entirely one double dactyl word, for example "va-le-dic-tor-i-an" (marked with two asterisks, **). Some purists still follow Hecht and Pascal's original rule that no single six-syllable word, once used in a double dactyl, should ever be knowingly used again.[1]
A self-referential example by Roger L. Robison:
An example by John Hollander:[1]
An example by E. Jaksch:[2]
A double dactyl by Paul Pascal on the subject of Antony and Cleopatra:
An example about Joe DiMaggio by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten:
In literature, Neil Gaiman's Stardust (novel) contains a double dactyl:
John Bellairs' classic fantasy novel The Face in the Frost contains several double dactyls, used as nonsense magic spells, such as the following:
And from Wendy Cope
Abbreviated Lays, a collection of double dactyl poetry about Roman History using the Latin language was written by Andres Reyes, Teacher at the famous Groton School in November 2003. He himself is a member of the form of 1980.
Double dactyl verse form is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rare in popular music. One example from this field is the song "Sam" by the Meat Puppets, which begins with the lyric: Maybe they had a/ridiculous statement/to make about something/they hadn't experienced.
A similar verse form called a McWhirtle was invented in 1989 by American poet Bruce Newling.
A related form is the double amphibrach, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter rules more closely resembling the double dactyl.