dyke
noun
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:
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
Conveniently, the dyke that keeps the bay from inundating farmers’ fields doubles as a multiuse gravel trail so you can ride parallel to this pristine stretch of coastline.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 29, 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
The solution is to build a dyke with floodgates—sliding panels that can be closed to seal off the opening—across the mouth of the river.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
Army soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, with using classified information to reap more than $400,000 from bets tied to the timing of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
Crews from East Sussex and West Sussex also tackled two fires in the South Downs National Park - one at Devil's Dyke and one near Eastbourne - overnight on Friday.
From BBC ● Jul. 12, 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
Mr. Van Dyke and Dad went to the union hall and sat around the table to inform the union leaders about the sell-off.
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
This is the finest part of the Province for stock; from the extensive tracts of salt marsh which lie in this county, many thousand acres of which are dyked and produce abundant crops.
From History of New Brunswick by Peter Fisher
The French essential poetry seems to me to flow out into prose works, into their school of romances, and to be least poetical when dyked up into rhythm.
From The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II by Sir Frederic G. (Frederic George) Kenyon
A great strip of Marsh lies contiguous to the city, some of which is dyked and yields excellent grass.
From History of New Brunswick by Peter Fisher
Long, dyked ridges, foam-tipped with snow-white quartzite rocks, stretched away to infinity, north and south; here and there a naked granite finger pointed to the cloudless sky.
From Lodges in the Wilderness by W. C. (William Charles) Scully
By dyking and pumping, certain wise men had changed ten acres, of sand and heath, into pasture and land for plowing.
From Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks by William Elliot Griffis
At the mouth of Cedar Creek there are about twenty acres of overflowed land which could easily be reclaimed by dyking.
From Official Report of the Exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands for the Government of British Columbia by Newton H. (Newton Henry) Chittenden
With milling, dyking and general farming, there was work at Prospect to keep all the members of the family busy, besides a large force of hired help.
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
Before another rainy season, the Etruscans and the Romans, working together, had made a very fair beginning on the dyking and draining of the worst of the marshes and the bridging of bad places.
From The Childhood of Rome by Louise Lamprey
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.
