However, its meaning can be extended metaphorically to refer to the "measure of a finger's breadth" or even "a unit of measure" in general. This is because in ancient Greece, the finger was used as a basic unit of measurement.
The word "dactylos" also appears in the term "dactyl", a metrical foot in poetry, consisting of one long syllable followed by two short syllables. This term derives from the fact that the dactyl was originally measured by the time it took to pronounce the word "dactylos" – the long syllable corresponding to the pronunciation of "dacty" and the short syllables to "los".