dyke1
/dʌɪk
/Derivatives
dykey
Origin
1940s (earlier as bulldyke): of unknown origin.
There are two almost contradictory aspects to dyke: it means both ‘something dug out’ and ‘something built up’. The first group of senses began in the medieval period and derives from the old Scandinavian word dík or diki, which corresponds to native English ditch (Old English) and is related to dig (Middle English). At much the same time related German and Dutch forms gave us the second group, initially in the sense ‘a city wall, a fortification’. A possible linking idea appears in the sense ‘dam’—a dam entails both the building up of an obstruction and the creation of a pool. The Dutch build dykes to prevent flooding from the sea. This is the context of the phrase to put your finger in a dyke, ‘to attempt to stem the advance of something undesirable’. It comes from a popular story of a heroic little Dutch boy who saved his community from flooding, by placing his finger in a hole in a dyke, thereby preventing it getting bigger and averting the disastrous consequences.
The word dyke is also a derogatory term for a lesbian, especially a masculine-looking one. Originally found in the fuller form bulldyke, it has been in use since at least the 1920s, but no one is sure of its origin.
Rhymes
dyke2
/dʌɪk/- As they camped in the fields in sight of the city walls the Mongols surprised them by smashing the dams and dikes nearby and flooding the encampment.
- The Netherlands is a land protected from flooding by dykes and dams.
- The busy prehistory is known rather than seen in the shadow remnants of dikes and earthworks.
- The 80 ha. site is best viewed from the well-preserved boundary dykes, forming the eastern side of the oppidum beside Cutham Lane.
- The dyke represents a Bronze Age tribal boundary, but was being damaged by mountain bikers.
- The first ramp, which slopes from the dike down to the park, is divided by a glass wall such that it serves as an external connecting passage between the park and dike, an entrance to the building and an internal space.
- After that, she led us along a thin, icy path on a dike between the channel and a deep, muddy ditch with sharp sticks jutting up from the bottom.
- The ditches, dikes and reed-edged fleets that crisscross the grazing marshes here are rich in invertebrates, including the scarce emerald damselfly.
- There's also something called the Klamath Straits Drain, along with scores of channelized creeks, uncountable dikes, and an aqueduct called the Lost River Diversion Channel.
- There are no mafic dykes or intrusions of similar age to the granitic rocks that could imply contemporaneous mafic magmatism.
- A swarm of mafic igneous dikes have intruded the Estes pegmatite and make a showy display in the quarry face.
- In 1968, a rock-filled dam with a flood control gate system was built in the New Brunswick, as a road connection and to protect diked farmland from flooding.
- The family was told not to spend money diking the property as the Socreds, when they came to power in 1975, had plans to purchase the property.
Phrases
put one's finger in the dyke
Origin
Middle English (denoting a trench or ditch): from Old Norse dík, related to ditch. (sense 1 of the noun) has been influenced by Middle Low German dīk 'dam' and Middle Dutch dijc 'ditch, dam'.