dyke

Etymology 1
A variant of, from Northern and , from. Influenced by and. See also ditch.

Noun

 * 1)  A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to serve as a boundary marker.
 * 2) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water.
 * 3)  Any navigable watercourse.
 * 4)  Any watercourse.
 * 5)  Any small body of water.
 * 6)  Any hollow dug into the ground.
 * 7)  A place to urinate and defecate: an outhouse or lavatory.
 * 8) An embankment formed by the spoil from the creation of a ditch.
 * 9) A wall, especially  a masoned city or castle wall.
 * 10)  A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker.
 * 11)  Any fence or hedge.
 * 12) An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.
 * 13)  Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty.
 * 14) A beaver's dam.
 * 15)  A jetty; a pier.
 * 16) A raised causeway.
 * 17)  A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault.
 * 18)  A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.
 * 1)  Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty.
 * 2) A beaver's dam.
 * 3)  A jetty; a pier.
 * 4) A raised causeway.
 * 5)  A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault.
 * 6)  A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.

Translations

 * Bulgarian:, отводнителен канал
 * Dutch:
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * German:
 * Italian:
 * Portuguese: trincheira
 * Russian: сто́чная кана́ва,, ,


 * Armenian:
 * Bulgarian:
 * Catalan:
 * Czech:
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Esperanto: digo
 * Estonian:
 * Finnish: tulvapato
 * French:
 * Georgian: კაშხალი, ზღუდარი, ჯებირი, საგუბარი, წყალსაწევი
 * German:
 * Greek:
 * Ancient: ἄνδηρον
 * Irish: cladán
 * Italian:, , ,
 * Japanese:
 * Korean:
 * Latin: diga
 * Latvian:
 * Macedonian: канач, трапиште
 * Maori: ahuriri
 * Ottoman Turkish: اور
 * Plautdietsch: Daum
 * Portuguese:
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:
 * Spanish:
 * Vietnamese:
 * Welsh:


 * Arabic: جَيْبْ نَافِذ
 * German: Gesteinsgang
 * Hungarian:, dejk
 * Irish: dingeán
 * Italian: dicco
 * Polish:
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:
 * Turkish: dayk

Verb

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

Etymology 2
. Attested since the 1940s (in Berrey and Van den Bark’s 1942 American Thesaurus of Slang) or 30s. Semantic development from has been proposed, and some sources from the 1890s are said to record dyke as slang for "vulva" and hedge of the dyke as slang for "pubic hair", but Green's Dictionary of Slang says this is not found in connection to lesbianism and Dictionary.com considers a connection unlikely.

/ is attested earlier, in reference to women since at least the 1920s  (the 29 July 1892 Decatur Daily Review in Illinois mentions a woman who "won the affections of Harvey Neal, alias 'Bulldyke'", whose gender is unclear);  compare ),, and , which are all attested earlier than bare dyke, e.g. in Parke's 1906 Human Sexuality, in the speech of Philadelphians, and backcountry black Americans. Compare , attested since around the same time and used especially by black women.

Other linguists suggested that bull dyke(r) referred to strong black women who dug dikes, or derived from +, perhaps in reference to black men. It has also been suggested dyke is a shortening of, from morphodite, from hermaphrodite, but the derivation may go in the other direction instead, with morphodyke being a blend of morphodite with the already-extant word dyke.

Noun

 * 1)  A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or butch traits or behavior.
 * 2)  A non-heterosexual woman.

Usage notes

 * This term for a lesbian is often derogatory (or taken as such) when used by straight people but is also used by some lesbians to refer to themselves positively. See and  for discussion.

Synonyms

 * See Thesaurus:female homosexual

Translations

 * Danish: betonlebbe
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * German: Kampflesbe
 * Portuguese:
 * Russian:


 * Danish: lebbe
 * Dutch:
 * French:
 * German:
 * Italian:
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Russian: ,
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Spanish: ,
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog: tibo
 * Turkish: ,

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 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