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What is "dyke"

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dyke
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dyke
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Damage has extended into the dykes which run between the grazing marshes.
▪ Its level rises slowly and the land behind the dykes sinks, but even more slowly.
▪ Their sheep-fanks and cattle-pounds spread away, across land rented from the inn-keeper, in a close mesh of stone dykes.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dyke

Dyke \Dyke\, n. See Dike. The spelling dyke is restricted by some to the geological meaning.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dyke

1931, American English, perhaps a shortening of morphadike, dialectal garbling of hermaphrodite; but bulldyker "engage in lesbian activities" is attested from 1921, and a source from 1896 lists dyke as slang for "the vulva."\n\n[T]he word appears first in the long forms, bulldiker and bulldyking, both used in the 1920s by American blacks. No African antecedents have been found for the term, however, which leads to the possibility that this is basically just another backcountry, barnyard word, perhaps a combination of BULL and DICK.

[Rawson]

Wiktionary
dyke

Etymology 1 n. 1 (alternative spelling of dike English) 2 (context Australia slang English) A toilet. 3 (context UK English) A ditch (rarely also refers to similar natural features, and to one natural valley, Devil's Dyke, Sussex, due to a legend that the devil dug it). 4 (context UK mainly S England English) An earthwork consisting of a ditch and a parallel rampart. 5 (context British English) An embankment to prevent inundation, or a causeway. 6 (context UK mainly Scotland and N England English) A mound of earth, stone- or turf-faced, sometimes topped with hedge planting, or a hedge alone, used as a fence. 7 (context UK mainly Scotland and N England English) A dry-stone wall usually forming a boundary to a wood, field or garden. 8 (context British geology English) A body of once molten igneous rock that was injected into older rocks in a manner that crosses bedding planes. Etymology 2

n. (context slang pejorative English) A lesbian, particularly one who appears macho or acts in a macho manner. This word has been reclaimed, by some, as politically empowering. (See usage notes.)

Related phrases:
WordNet
dyke

  1. n. offensive terms for a lesbian who is noticeably masculine [syn: butch, dike]

  2. a barrier constructed to contain the flow of water or to keep out the sea [syn: dam, dike, levee]

  3. v. enclose with a dike; "dike the land to protect it from water" [syn: dike]

Wikipedia
Dyke

Dyke or dike may refer to:

  • A natural or artificial slope or wall to regulate water levels, called levee in American English
  • ditch, a water filled drainage trench
  • A regional term for a dry stone wall
  • Dike (geology), a subvertical sheet-like intrusion of magma or sediment
  • Dike (mythology), the Greek goddess of moral justice
  • Dikes, diagonal or side-cutting pliers, a hand tool used by electricians and others
  • Dyke (car), a brass era automobile
  • Dyke (slang), a slang word meaning "lesbian"
  • " D-Yikes!", an episode of South Park
  • 99 Dike, an asteroid
Dyke (surname)

Dyke is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

  • Edwin Dyke (1842–1919), English clergyman and cricketer
  • Greg Dyke (born 1947), former Director General of the BBC and current Chairman of Brentford Football Club
  • John Dyke (rugby player) (1884–1960), Wales international rugby union player
  • John Dyke, lead singer of German synthpop band Dyko
  • John and Jennie Dyke, American aircraft designers
  • William Dyke (born 1930), mayor of Madison, Wisconsin
  • Sir William Hart Dyke, 7th Baronet (1837–1931)
Dyke (slang)

The term dyke or dike is a slang noun meaning lesbian; it is also a slang adjective describing things associated with lesbianism. It originated as a derogatory label for a masculine, tomboyish, or butch woman; while this usage still exists, the term dyke has been reappropriated to an extent as a word implying assertiveness and toughness, or simply as a neutral synonym for lesbian.

Dyke (automobile company)

Established in St.Louis in 1899 by A.L.Dyke (Andrew Lee Dyke), Dyke was the first American auto parts business. Dyke also sold early autos, kit car or assembled. In addition to the Dyke name, the company also sold automobiles under the St. Louis ( St. Louis Motor Company) and Dyke-Britton names.

Usage examples of "dyke".

CHAPTER NINE annis drove the Mini carefully through Goes and over the Zeeland Brug to the outskirts of Zierikzee where she turned off along the brick dyke road which would take her to Schudderbeurs.

Once, as he put his horse to an earthern bank that dyked farmland from the marsh, he saw the white, fretting line of waves far to the east, and, beyond it, a dark shape in the night that was a moored ship waiting for the ebb.

There are many unpleasanter ways of spending a warm autumn afternoon than standing under the willows of Fleam Dyke watching the pools of a river for the smoke of disturbed mud and the wavering silver which is an eel.

Henry Van Dyke, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, and Richard Watson Gilder for special permission to reproduce, in this Reader, selections from their writings.

The Dutch were greatly alarmed about this time with an apprehension of being overwhelmed by an inundation, occasioned by worms, which were said to have consumed the piles and timber-work that supported their dykes.

Our gudeman leans owre his kale-yard dyke, And a blithe auld bodie is he.

A little after this the two young men took themselves away, Dyke obligingly carrying them in the wagon as far as the gate that opened into the Quien Sabe ranch.

Dyke told how she first had gone to Quien Sabe, intending to telephone from there to Bonneville, but Annixter was in San Francisco, and in his absence the house was locked up, and the over-seer, who had a duplicate key, was himself in Bonneville.

Dyke and Sidney, like Hilma, had been turned out of Quien Sabe, he had thrown open Los Muertos to them.

Dyke, the seizure of Quien Sabe, the murder of Harran, the assassination of Annixter!

To the right of the Bassin a broad canal, constructed by Napoleon in 1810, extends in a straight line eastwards, contained within dykes which raise it above a wide expanse of level meadow-lands intersected by ditches, and dotted here and there by the white-walled cottages with red roofs and green outside shutters which are so typical of Flemish scenery.

The trader track would fade before long, he recalled, the dyke on his right dwindling, the road itself becoming a sandy swath humped with ant nests, bone-white driftwood and yellow knots of grass, with floods wiping the ruts away every spring.

The headstrong young ruler, who had taken his country out of its alliance with France and Britain into a foolish neutrality, who had refused to restore the alliance even during the months when he knew the Germans were preparing a massive assault across his border, who at the last moment, after Hitler had struck, called on the French and British for military succor and received it, now deserted them in a desperate hour, opening the dyke for German divisions to pour through on the flank of the sorely pressed Anglo-French troops.

The source of the flooding was all too easy to locate: close to the big fuel storage tanks just outwith the perimeter of the airport itself, a wide breach had appeared in the dyke of the canal to the south: the debris, stones and mud that were scattered along the top of the dyke on either side of the breach left no doubt that the rupture of the containing dyke had not been of a natural or spontaneous origin.

This took him several nights, and when it was finished, he was yet more choice in his selection of turf, taking it from the natural grass growing along the roads and on the earthen dykes, or walls, the outer sides of which feed the portionless cows of that country.