dyke
noun
dike.
Showing results for "dyke"
- a variation of dike.
dyke
1 American
[dahyk]
/ daɪk /
noun
dyked,
dyking
dyke
2
American
[dahyk]
/ daɪk /
Also
dike
noun
Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.
dyke
1
British
/ daɪk /
noun
-
an embankment constructed to prevent flooding, keep out the sea, etc
-
a ditch or watercourse
-
a bank made of earth excavated for and placed alongside a ditch
-
a wall, esp a dry-stone wall
-
a barrier or obstruction
-
a vertical or near-vertical wall-like body of igneous rock intruded into cracks in older rock
-
informal
-
a lavatory
-
( as modifier )
a dyke roll
-
verb
-
civil engineering an embankment or wall built to confine a river to a particular course
-
(tr) to protect, enclose, or drain (land) with a dyke
Dyke
2
British
/ dɑɪk /
noun
dyke
3
British
/ daɪk /
noun
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
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The former Environment Secretary Steve Barclay has questioned in Parliament why there has been no prosecution yet, after hundreds of dead fish were found floating in a dyke.
From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2026
The festivities kick off with a drag block party, daytime music and arts fest and wrap with a parade and dyke day in the park.
From Seattle Times ● May 31, 2024
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
Dyke set the England team two targets: reach the semis of Euro in 2020 and win the World Cup in 2022.
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
We’d come home, relax and watch TV, probably old episodes of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
His prosecution follows the April arrest of Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. special-forces soldier accused of using his role in the military operation in Venezuela to earn more than $400,000 in betting profits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
At the Coalwood Women’s Club meeting on Thursday evening, the Great Six teachers met with Mom and Mrs. Van Dyke and gave them their unsolicited advice on the whole matter of us outlaw rocket boys.
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
Utsaladdy, via Sylvan and Stanwood passes of lower Stillaguamish where lie rich dyked lands.
From The Beauties of the State of Washington A Book for Tourists by Giles, Harry F.
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 James, Bartlett Burleigh
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 Wason, Robert Alexander
The whole island is swamp, dyked like the Netherlands, and trenched and divided by ditches and a canal, by means of which the rice-fields are periodically overflowed, and the harvest transported to the threshing mills.
From Records of Later Life by Kemble, Fanny
The latter stream has an extensive delta of tide land, fifty or sixty acres of which could be reclaimed by dyking.
From Official Report of the Exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands for the Government of British Columbia by Chittenden, Newton H. (Newton Henry)
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 Trueman, Howard
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 Bindloss, Harold
The strange thing was, Jim's notion of dyking the marsh annoyed him more than all; the annoyance was perhaps illogical, but he could not conquer it.
From Partners of the Out-Trail by Bindloss, Harold
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
