noun
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a female fox
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a quarrelsome or spiteful woman
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of vixen
First recorded in 1375–1425; southern late Middle English, replacing earlier northern Middle English fixen, from Old English fyxe, feminine of fox fox (compare fyxen “pertaining to a fox,” Old High German fuhsin “vixen”)
Explanation
A vixen is a female fox. Or it can be a woman with a temper. If you really want to insult a woman who is a little short on patience, call her a vixen. She won’t like it. Somewhere along the line the word vixen came to mean a hot-headed or ill-tempered person. Nowadays vixen is often used as a derisive term for an unpleasant or mean woman. Vixen also gets used frequently in descriptions of female film characters. In this way it doesn’t really mean that the character is bad tempered. As slang, to call someone a vixen means that she's sexy and flirtatious, a label she may or may not like.
Vocabulary lists containing vixen
A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Pax
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The Old Willis Place
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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:
Kim Kardashian is a reality star, a tabloid sensation, a prison-reform advocate, a beauty and shapewear mogul and a former video vixen.
From New York Times ● Sep. 21, 2023
Keeping a mother vixen in confinement for a recommended six to 12 months would be hell on her, and the people who were bitten would still have to undergo rabies shots.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 11, 2022
Ms Buck said: "They're very old for this time of year so we think it's possibly a young vixen who was having child control problems."
From BBC ● Mar. 20, 2022
Biologists said a vixen named Tule, who was tending to at least two pups in the remote Caribou Wilderness of Lassen National Forest, was at particular risk from the raging Dixie fire.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2021
The vixen swiped at one of the coyotes from above, taunting him, and Pax snapped at the other’s flank.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
The high-pitched wails heard in winter are usually made by vixens as they try to summon a mate.
From BBC ● Feb. 8, 2024
You know the type I’m talking about – the cruel and elegant vixens, the glittery fire-breathers, the flawlessly manicured soul-devourers.
From Salon ● Jan. 31, 2024
A new study in mice, but with implications for people and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides a clearer picture of the cellular glitches that turn us into silver foxes and vixens.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
Today’s girls are neither “tough girls,” like that moto-jacketed Salander; nor femmes fatales, like the vixens who dominated noir fiction and films; nor “good girls” like Nancy and her prim posse, Bess and George.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 11, 2017
A red fox perched on a stump, two dusky kits peeking around the vixens back.
From "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby
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.
