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
Sensitivity
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:
I was already out of the closet, a little baby dyke, and I remember telling my sister, who’s now married to Phil — I was like, “Look at those two.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2024
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
They took cover behind a rice paddy dyke.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2022
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
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
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
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
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
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
The granite hills, here as throughout Midian, were veined and dyked with two different classes of plutonic rock.
From The Land of Midian — Volume 1 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
SO within a while they saw a tower as white as any snow, well matchecold all about, and double dyked.
From Le Mort d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Sir Thomas Malory
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 Fanny Kemble
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
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
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 Newton H. (Newton Henry) Chittenden
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
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
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
