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:
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
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
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
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
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
Director of system operations, Craig Dyke, said engineers would be working "around the clock" to balance supply and demand.
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 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
Van Dyke, the special-forces soldier, funded his Polymarket bets with transfers from Coinbase Global, a regulated cryptocurrency exchange that tracks customers’ identities and cooperates with law enforcement.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026
“Wait’ll Jake Mosby sees the spinster I choose,” Mrs. Van Dyke told the fence.
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
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 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
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 Fisher, Peter
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 Malory, Thomas, 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
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 Chittenden, Newton H. (Newton Henry)
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)
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 Griffis, William Elliot
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
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.
