English

Alternative forms

• dike (standard US spelling for most senses)

Noun

dyke ‎(plural dykes)

1. (Britain, historical) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to serve as a boundary marker.
2. (Britain) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water.
3. (Britain, dialect) Any navigable watercourse.
4. (Britain, dialect) Any watercourse.
5. (Britain, dialect) Any small body of water.
6. (obsolete) Any hollow dug into the ground.
7. (now chiefly Australia, slang) A place to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory.
   • 1977, Ian Slack-Smith, "The Passing of the Twin Seater" in The Cubbaroo Tales:

     In Cubbaroo's dim distant past
     They built a double dyke.
     Back to back in the yard it stood
     An architectural dream in wood.

8. (Britain) An embankment formed by the creation on a ditch.
9. (obsolete) A city wall.
10. (now chiefly Scotland) A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker.
11. (Britain, dialect) Any fence or hedge.
12. (Britain) An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.
    • 1891, Susan Hale, The Story of Nations: Mexico, p. 100:

      The king of Texcuco advised the building of a great dike, so thick and strong as to keep out the water.

13. (Britain, figuratively) Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty.
14. (Britain) A beaver's dam.
15. (Britain, dialect) A jetty; a pier.
16. (Britain) A raised causeway.
17. (Britain, dialect, mining) A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault.
18. (Britain, geology) A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.

Synonyms

• (long, narrow excavation): ditch, trench, fosse
• (small body of water): puddle, pond, pool, lakelet, mere
• (any hollow): den, cave, hole, pit
• (any embankment): bank, embankment, earthwork
• (barrier of stone or earth): bank, embankment, dam, levee, breakwater, floodwall, seawall

Derived terms

• dry-stone dyke
• dyke-back
• dyke bottom
• dyke louper
• dyke phase, dyke-phase
• dyke road
• dyke-rock
• dyke swarm, dyke-swarm
• fail dyke
• February fill-dyke

Related terms

• ditch
• dig

Translations

Verb

dyke ‎(third-person singular simple present dykes, present participle dyking, simple past and past participle dyked)

1. (transitive or intransitive) To dig, particularly to create a ditch.
2. (transitive) To surround with a ditch, to entrench.
3. (transitive, Scotland) To surround with a low dirt or stone wall.
4. (transitive or intransitive) To raise a protective earthwork against a sea or river.
5. (transitive) To scour a watercourse.
6. (transitive) To steep [fibers] within a watercourse.

Etymology 2

Unknown. Attested US 1942, in Berrey and Van den Bark’s American Thesaurus of Slang.^[2]

Noun

dyke ‎(plural dykes)

1. (slang, usually pejorative) A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or macho traits or behavior.

Usage notes

This term for a lesbian is often derogatory (or taken as such) when used by heterosexuals but is also used by some lesbians and bisexual women to refer to themselves positively. See reclaimed word and reappropriation for discussion.

Synonyms

• See Wikisaurus:female homosexual

Derived terms

• bulldyke

Translations

Anagrams

• E.D. Ky.

References

1. ↑ Oxford Dictionaries. "dyke".
2. ↑ "dike, dyke, n.3" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989, OED Online, Oxford UP, April 4, 2000..

• Oxford English Dictionary, "dike | dyke, n.¹" & "dike | dyke, v.¹".

Scots

Etymology

Old English dīc

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dəik/

Noun

dyke ‎(plural dykes)

1. A dry-stone wall usually forming a boundary to a wood, field or garden.
2. A mound of earth, stone- or turf-faced, sometimes topped with hedge planting, used as a fence between any two portions of land.
3. A hedge