I too have heard it said. I looked up 'pterodactyl' and 'pterodon' in Wikipedia, decided that the distinction was a pedantry and that in common parlance - and ooh, what a silly phrase that is - 'pterodactyl' is a fine umbrella word for both.
It does sound like a Greek metre. I assume there's a similar word-root - finger/foot/digit, some meaning like that? I have wondered why 'foot' is the word for a syllable of poetry, and it just occurred to me (duh!) that it's probably because, to keep a beat, we tap our feet.
Or maybe that's one of those silly derivations and it's nothing like that at all.
The care and feeding of a pterodactyl must be tricky, though Jack and Ianto seem to have sorted it out - at least well enough to keep their alive.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-12-13 01:51 pm (UTC)It does sound like a Greek metre. I assume there's a similar word-root - finger/foot/digit, some meaning like that? I have wondered why 'foot' is the word for a syllable of poetry, and it just occurred to me (duh!) that it's probably because, to keep a beat, we tap our feet.
Or maybe that's one of those silly derivations and it's nothing like that at all.
The care and feeding of a pterodactyl must be tricky, though Jack and Ianto seem to have sorted it out - at least well enough to keep their alive.