Showing results for "dyke"

• a variation of dike.

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• dyke
  dyke

  noun

  dike.
• Dyke
  Dyke

  noun

  Greg ( ory ). born 1947, British television executive; director-general of the BBC (2000–04)

dyke

¹ American  

[dahyk] / daɪk /

noun

dyked, dyking

1. dike.

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dyke ² American  

[dahyk] / daɪk /

Also dike

noun

Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.

1. a contemptuous term used to refer to a lesbian.

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dyke ¹ British  

/ daɪk /

noun

1. an embankment constructed to prevent flooding, keep out the sea, etc

2. a ditch or watercourse

3. a bank made of earth excavated for and placed alongside a ditch

4. a wall, esp a dry-stone wall

5. a barrier or obstruction

6. a vertical or near-vertical wall-like body of igneous rock intruded into cracks in older rock

7. informal

   1. a lavatory

   2. ( as modifier )

      a dyke roll

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verb

1. civil engineering an embankment or wall built to confine a river to a particular course

2. (tr) to protect, enclose, or drain (land) with a dyke

Dyke ² British  

/ dɑɪk /

noun

1. Greg ( ory ). born 1947, British television executive; director-general of the BBC (2000–04)

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dyke ³ British  

/ daɪk /

noun

1. slang a lesbian

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Sensitive Note

The terms dyke and bull dyke are used with disparaging intent and are perceived as insulting. However, they have been adopted as positive terms of self-reference by young or radical lesbians and in the academic community. In the mainstream gay community, lesbian and gay remain the terms of choice.

Other Word Forms

• dykey
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of dyke

First recorded in 1940–45; earlier in form bulldike (with a variant bulldagger ); of obscure origin; claimed to be a shortening of morphodyke (variant of morphodite, a reshaping of hermaphrodite ), though morphodyke is more likely a blend of morphodite and a preexisting dyke; other hypothesized connections, such as with diked out or dike “ditch,” are dubious on semantic grounds

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dyke Dyke dyked dyking

More significantly, the government has begun reconstructing the dam and dyke system at Alau - on the outskirts of Maiduguri - which caused the flooding.

From BBC ● Sep. 10, 2025

HVA teams found poor dyke maintenance, uncleaned riverbeds and overlapping roles in flood defence management, its CEO Miltiadis Gkouzouris told Reuters.

From Reuters ● Nov. 21, 2023

I was the little junior dyke at Lesbian Tide with Jeanne Córdova, who had a huge influence on me.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2023

As I did that, I realized, “Oh, these are all people working inside what I consider dyke culture.”

From New York Times ● Jun. 22, 2023

They rattled nine miles in a borrowed car to the quarters that squatted so close that only the dyke separated them from great, sprawling Okechobee.

From "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston

I’m like, “I’m not Dick Van Dyke, so I don’t know who you’re impersonating.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026

Instead, he seemed a good, flustered company man anxiously determined to be normal—like Dick Van Dyke, perhaps, or Bob Newhart—while remaining very funny indeed.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026

In 2013, shortly after taking over as chairman of the Football Association, Greg Dyke was fiercely critical of the structure of English football.

From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026

By then, Moore’s starring role in “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was already leading to greater things, including founding MTM Enterprises with then-husband Grant Tinker.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2026

“His courage should be an inspiration to us all,” Mr. Van Dyke concluded.

From "October Sky" by Homer Hickam

By the 1950s, all but 8% of the bay’s 77,000 hectares of marshes had been dyked off or filled for human uses such as agriculture, rubbish dumps, sewage-treatment plants, navy bases, airports and salt ponds.

From Nature ● Oct. 8, 2018

The' was only one man in it, but he was dyked out in Sunday clothes, an' purt' nigh froze to death.

From Happy Hawkins by Robert Alexander Wason

He also dyked and cultivated a large piece of meadow or marsh, from which he gathered more grain than from any land which had been made from woodland into tillable land.

From Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 by Bartlett Burleigh James

She had been buried in the shore field, where a square space had been dyked off in the centre for a burial lot because the church was then so far away.

From Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 by L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

This region now is drained and dyked, but in earlier times it was a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy islets, with frequent "islands" of firmer and more elevated ground.

From England, Picturesque and Descriptive A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel by Joel Cook

Cairo has since been built into a considerable town by dyking out the rivers, and was an important naval and military point during the Civil War....

From With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 1 by Various

A description of their methods of dyking and constructing aboideaux, written in 1710, is interesting to those who are doing the same work now.

From The Chignecto Isthmus and its first settlers by Howard Trueman

That means we can do nothing there until next winter, and must continue the dyking all summer.

From Thurston of Orchard Valley by W. Herbert Dunton

Still, you see, he's rash; we have an example in his dyking plan, and I would not like my money squandered.

From Partners of the Out-Trail by Harold Bindloss

Beside this large expenditure in mills, most of which was made in the lifetime of the senior William, there was a large outlay made for dyking and aboideau building.

From The Chignecto Isthmus and its first settlers by Howard Trueman