# dyke
## English
### Alternative forms

* dike (standard US spelling)

### Etymology 1

A variant of dike, from Northern Middle English dik and dike (“ditch”), from Old Norse díki (“ditch”). Influenced by Middle Dutch dijc (“ditch; dam”) and Middle Low German dīk (“dam”). See also ditch.

#### Pronunciation

* IPA: /daɪk/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Rhymes: -aɪk

#### Noun

dyke (plural dykes) (British spelling)
* (historical) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to serve as a boundary marker.
* A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water.
* (dialect) Any navigable watercourse.
* (dialect) Any watercourse.
* (dialect) Any small body of water.
* (obsolete) Any hollow dug into the ground.
* (now chiefly Australia, slang) A place to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory.
** 1977, Ian Slack-Smith, “The Passing of the Twin Seater”, in The Cubbaroo Tales:In Cubbaroo's dim distant past They built a double dyke. Back to back in the yard it stood An architectural dream in wood.
* An embankment formed by the spoil from the creation of a ditch.
* A wall, especially (obsolete outside heraldry) a masoned city or castle wall.
** 1722, Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry Speculative and Practical, page 82:Inchbrakie gives for Arms, Or, a Dyke (or Wall) Feſsways, broke down in ſome places, and in Baſe a Roſe Gules, on a chief Sable three Eſcalops of the firſt. The Dyke (or Wall) here, is aſſumed not only to difference, but to perpetuate the valiant Action of Graham before mentioned; in throwing down the Wall and Ditch, which the Romans made betwixt Forth and Clyde, to keep out the Scots, [...]
** 1894, Henry Gough, James Parker, A Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry, page 608:Wall, (sometimes called a dyke, fr. mur) : this is generally found in connection with castles or towns which are walled (muraillé). A wall of which kind should be masoned (fr. maçonné) and embattled (fr. crenellé), even though this be not specified. [...] Or, a dyke [or wall] fesswise [masoned proper] broken down in some places gules; [...] —Graham, Inchbrakie, Scotland [similar arms borne by Græme of Stapleton].
** 2023 February 21, Nick Aitken, Dry Stone Walling - Materials and Techniques, The Crowood Press, →ISBN:The Galloway Dyke / In southwest Scotland there is a local style of dry stone dyke that is now recognized as 'the Galloway dyke', although when this pattern of was first developed, it was simply described as 'the sheep dyke'.
* (now chiefly Scotland) A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker.
** 2023 February 21, Nick Aitken, Dry Stone Walling - Materials and Techniques, The Crowood Press, →ISBN:The Galloway Dyke / In southwest Scotland there is a local style of dry stone dyke that is now recognized as 'the Galloway dyke', although when this pattern of was first developed, it was simply described as 'the sheep dyke'.
* (dialect) Any fence or hedge.
* An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.
** 1891, Susan Hale, The Story of Nations: Mexico, page 100:The king of Texcuco advised the building of a great dike, so thick and strong as to keep out the water.
** 1953 April, “Devastation in Holland”, in Railway Magazine, page 217:Serious as was the flood damage in England, the bursting of some of the dykes on the coast of Holland resulted in an even more widespread and devastating inundation.
* (figuratively) Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty.
* A beaver's dam.
* (dialect) A jetty; a pier.
* A raised causeway.
* (dialect, mining) A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault.
* (geology) A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.
** 1968, Transactions of the Geological Society of South Africa, page 148:Their exact relationship to the host-rock is obscure but from their texture and observed metamorphic relationship they are thought to be intrusive dykes rather than intercalations of more basic lava.

##### Synonyms

* (long, narrow excavation): ditch, trench, fosse
* (small body of water): puddle, pond, pool, lakelet, mere
* (any hollow): den, cave, hole, pit
* (any embankment): bank, embankment, earthwork
* (barrier of stone or earth): bank, embankment, dam, levee, breakwater, floodwall, seawall

##### Derived terms

* Devil's Dyke
* dry-stone dyke
* dyke-back
* dyke bottom
* dykelet
* dyke-phase
* dyke phase
* dyke road
* dyke-rock
* dyke swarm
* dyke-swarm
* dyke up
* fail dyke
* February fill-dyke
* fill-dyke
* finger in the dyke
* King's Dyke

##### Related terms

* ditch
* dig

##### Translations
#### Verb

dyke (third-person singular simple present dykes, present participle dyking, simple past and past participle dyked)
* (transitive or intransitive) To dig, particularly to create a ditch.
* (transitive) To surround with a ditch, to entrench.
* (transitive, Scotland) To surround with a low dirt or stone wall.
* (transitive or intransitive) To raise a protective earthwork against a sea or river.
* (transitive) To scour a watercourse.
* (transitive) To steep [fibers] within a watercourse.

### Etymology 2

Uncertain. Attested since the 1940s (in Berrey and Van den Bark’s 1942 American Thesaurus of Slang) or 30s. Semantic development from dyke (“ditch”) has been proposed, and some sources from the 1890s are said to record dyke as slang for "vulva" and hedge of the dyke as slang for "pubic hair", but Green's Dictionary of Slang says this is not found in connection to lesbianism and Dictionary.com considers a connection unlikely.
Bull dyke / bulldike is attested earlier, in reference to women since at least the 1920s (the 29 July 1892 Decatur Daily Review in Illinois mentions a woman who "won the affections of Harvey Neal, alias 'Bulldyke'", whose gender is unclear); compare dike (“noun: well-dressed man; verb: be well dressed”)), bulldyker, and bulldyking, which are all attested earlier than bare dyke, e.g. in Parke's 1906 Human Sexuality, in the speech of Philadelphians, and backcountry black Americans. Compare bulldagger, attested since around the same time and used especially by black women.
Other linguists suggested that bull dyke(r) referred to strong black women who dug dikes, or derived from bull + dick, perhaps in reference to black men. It has also been suggested dyke is a shortening of morphodyke, from morphodite, from hermaphrodite, but the derivation may go in the other direction instead, with morphodyke being a blend of morphodite with the already-extant word dyke.

#### Noun

dyke (plural dykes)
* (slang, usually derogatory, offensive) A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or butch traits or behavior.
* (slang, usually derogatory, loosely, offensive) A non-heterosexual woman.

##### Usage notes

* This term for a lesbian is often derogatory (or taken as such) when used by straight people but is also used by some lesbians to refer to themselves positively. See reclaimed word and reappropriation for discussion.

##### Synonyms

* See Thesaurus:female homosexual

##### Derived terms

* bi-dyke
* big dyke energy
* boydyke
* bull dyke
* busy as a dyke in a hardware store
* designer dyke
* diesel dyke
* dykedar
* dykedom
* dykehood
* dykeling
* dyke out
* dykephobia
* dykery
* dykey
* dykish
* dykon
* kike dyke
* leatherdyke
* troglodyke
* tryke

##### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### References

* ↑ Oxford Dictionaries. "dyke".
* ↑ "dike, dyke, n.3" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989, OED Online, Oxford UP, April 4, 2000..
* ↑ “dyke”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
* 1 2 3 4 5 Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “dyke”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
* ↑ “hedge”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present
* 1 2 3 4 “bulldyke”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
* ↑ “bull-dyke”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present
* ↑ “Word Origins: dyke”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎, 2019 December 3 (last accessed), archived from the original on 3 December 2019
* ↑ Joseph Richardson Parke, Human Sexuality: A Medico-literary Treatise (1906), page 309: "In American homosexual argot, female inverts, or lesbian lovers, are known euphemistically as 'bulldykers,' whatever that may mean: at least that is their sobriquet in the 'Red Light' district of Philadelphia.
* ↑ JoAnne Myers, Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements (2013), p. 97
* ↑ Yetta Howard, Ugly Differences: Queer Female Sexuality in the Underground (2018), p. 238, which also refers to "Bogus, “The 'Queen B,'” and Walker, “The Debutante in Harlem,” 58–102, and “Lesbian Pulp in Black and White,” 103–138, for considerations of the figure of the black bulldagger in other Harlem Renaissance texts."
* ↑ Charles Panati, Sexy Origins and Intimate Things (1998), p. 181: "In fact, “bulldiking” is one of the earliest phrases in which the term “dike" has tough female overtones. It appeared in the American South in the nineteenth century, used by black Americans. Some linguists believe that strong black women who helped dig watercourses on Southern plantations were called “bulldikes.” Others, however, claim that "dike" is really a corruption of "dick", slang for "penis," and [...] argue that in the American South, black men who worked on plantations were called "bull dicks" by their white owners."
* ↑ Sterling K. Eisiminger (1991) The Consequence of Error and Other Language Essays, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated: “Archibald Hill suggests that both dike and dyke are respectively clipped forms of morphodite and morphodyke, themselves clipped and mispronounced forms of hermaphrodite (A.S. 57.1).”
* Oxford English Dictionary, "dike | dyke, n.¹" & "dike | dyke, v.¹".

### Anagrams

* E.D. Ky.

## Scots
### Etymology

From Old English dīc.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /dəik/

### Noun

dyke (plural dykes)
* A dry-stone wall usually forming a boundary to a wood, field or garden.
* A mound of earth, stone- or turf-faced, sometimes topped with hedge planting, used as a fence between any two portions of land.
* A hedge