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:
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
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
Join us for the annual rally focused on political activism — featuring dyke-identified speakers and performers — followed by a march around the North Capitol Hill neighborhood representing the wide spectrum of dyke identity.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 1, 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
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
We’d come home, relax and watch TV, probably old episodes of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
Gannon Ken Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
He had not seen many episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, so he was not surprised that it was an episode he could not remember seeing before.
From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
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 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
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 Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud)
The shore, inside along the Texelsdiep, is dyked; on the outside, along the North Sea, it is beset with dunes.
From Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 by James, Bartlett Burleigh
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 Kenyon, Frederic G. (Frederic George), Sir
That means we can do nothing there until next winter, and must continue the dyking all summer.
From Thurston of Orchard Valley by Dunton, W. Herbert
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
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
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 Trueman, Howard
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 Trueman, Howard
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.
