noun
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a female fox
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a quarrelsome or spiteful woman
Other Word Forms
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.
Or if Gein’s rumored girlfriend, Adeline Watkins, was the cruel, gore-obsessed vixen that Suzanna Son’s performance makes her out to be.
From Salon • Oct. 29, 2025
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
Waters’ muse Divine, the drag performer who was transfixing on screen whether playing a criminal vixen or a put-upon suburban mom, passed away in 1988.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 16, 2023
The vixen was found by workers in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, at about 07:00 BST, West Midlands Fire Service said.
From BBC • Aug. 11, 2023
A fox barked nearby—the vixen, I supposed—warning the kits I was coming.
From "The Old Willis Place" by Mary Downing Hahn
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.
