different between dyke vs fem

English

Alternative forms

• dike (standard US spelling)

Etymology 1

A variant of dike, from Northern Middle English dik and dike (“ditch”), from Old Norse díki (“ditch”). Influenced by Middle Dutch dijc (“ditch; dam”) and Middle Low German d?k (“dam”). See alsoditch.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /da?k/
• Rhymes: -a?k

Noun

dyke (plural dykes) (British spelling)

1. (historical) 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. (dialect) Any navigable watercourse.
4. (dialect) Any watercourse.
5. (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. An embankment formed by the creation of 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. (dialect) Any fence or hedge.
12. 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. (figuratively) Any impediment, barrier, or difficulty.
14. A beaver's dam.
15. (dialect) A jetty; a pier.
16. A raised causeway.
17. (dialect, mining) A fissure in a rock stratum filled with intrusive rock; a fault.
18. (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

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

Uncertain. Attested since the 1940s (in Berrey and Van den Bark’s 1942 American Thesaurus of Slang) or 1930s.

Semantic development from dyke (“ditch”) 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 dyke in the latter phrase had no reference to lesbianism and Dictionary.com considers a connection unlikely.

Bull dyke / bulldike 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), and bulldyker (and the practice of bulldyking) are also attested earlier, e.g. in Parke's 1906 Human Sexuality, in the speech of Philadelphians, and backcountry American blacks. Compare bulldagger, 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 bull + dick, perhaps in reference to black men.

Noun

dyke (plural dykes)

1. (slang, usually derogatory) A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or butch 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 to refer to themselves positively. See reclaimed word and reappropriation for discussion.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:female homosexual

Derived terms

• bi-dyke
• troglodyke

Related terms

• bull dyke

Translations

References

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

Anagrams

• E.D. Ky.

Scots

Etymology

From Old English d?c

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?ik/

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

English

Etymology

Clipping of feminine

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?m/
• Rhymes: -?m

Noun

fem (plural fems)

1. (LGBT, uncommon) Synonym of femme

   Antonym: butch

   • 2014, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, Routledge (?ISBN)

     Oral history gave them an opportunity to share their vision of the world across generations, while giving us a chance to imagine the pleasure and pain of daily life for butches and fems in an earlier period.

2. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A feminine or effeminate person.
   • 2014, D Shuckerow, Take off your masc: The hegemonic gay male's gender performance on Grindr, quoting someone on Grindr:

     "Versatile, but love to bottom [...] No divas or fems. Not homophobic at all, just my personal preference."

   • 2018, Luis Menéndez-Antuña, Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation, Routledge (?ISBN):

     [...] chasers looking for silver daddies, exec types for college jocks, straights for gays, fems for mascs, smooths for hairies, huskies for slims, blacks for Latinos, whites for Asians, straights for gays, white collars for blue collars, ...

Adjective

fem (comparative more fem, superlative most fem)

1. (colloquial) Feminine, effeminate.

   Antonym: masc

2. (LGBT) Synonym of femme

   Antonym: butch

   • 2007, Cameron McCarthy, Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method, and Policy, Peter Lang (?ISBN), page 79:

     Dozens of queers, including female to male/male to female transsexuals, leathers, bears and bisexuals, butch and fem lesbians, […]

Anagrams

• EFM, EMF, MEF, emf

Catalan

Etymology 1

From Latin fimum.

Noun

fem m (plural fems)

1. dung
2. (chiefly in the plural) manure (animal excrement used as fertilizer)

Related terms

• femar
• femta

Etymology 2

See the etymology of the main entry.

Verb

fem

1. first-person plural present indicative form of fer
2. first-person plural present subjunctive form of fer
3. first-person plural imperative form of fer

Further reading

• “fem” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “fem” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “fem” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “fem” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Danish

Etymology

From Old Norse fimm, from Proto-Germanic *fimf, from Proto-Indo-European *pénk?e (“five”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?f?m?]

Numeral

fem

1. five

Elfdalian

Etymology

From Old Norse fimm, from Proto-Germanic *fimf. Cognate with Swedish fem.

Numeral

fem

1. five

French

Etymology

English femme, fem (with the rarer spelling borrowed to avoid ambiguity with French femme (“woman”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?m/

Noun

fem f (plural fems)

1. a femme (feminine queer woman) (contrast butch)
   • 2007, Wendy Delorme, Quatrième génération, Bernard Grasset, pages 23-24:

     Pour faire simple, une fem (prononcer « faime ») c'est une gouine qui n'a rien contre les jupes, les talons hauts, le vernis à ongles et le maquillage. […] On confond parfois les fems avec les lipstick lesbiennes, les charmantes saphiques éthérées comme on en a vu à la fin des années 90 dans les pubs Dior, Benetton et Versace. […] Les fems ont ça de différent des lipstick lesbiennes que notre féminité n'est pas un passe-droit pour d'intégrer, mais au contraire le drapeau de la subversion.

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

From Old Norse fimm (“five”), from Proto-Germanic *fimf, ultimately from *pémpe, variant of Proto-Indo-European *pénk?e.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?m/

Numeral

fem

1. five

Derived terms

Related terms

• femte

References

• “fem” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Old Norse fimm (“five”)

Numeral

fem

1. five

Derived terms

• femdel
• femkamp
• femkant
• tjuefem

Related terms

• femte

References

• “fem” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Romansch

Alternative forms

• (Rumantsch Grischun) fim
• (Puter, Vallader) füm

Etymology

From Latin f?mus.

Noun

fem m

1. (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran) smoke

Swedish

Etymology

From Old Norse fimm (“five”), from Proto-Germanic *fimf, ultimately from *pémpe, variant of Proto-Indo-European *pénk?e.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?m/

Numeral

fem

1. five

Coordinate terms

Related terms

See also

• noll, ett, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio, elva, tolv

References

• fem in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

Volapük

Etymology

Borrowed from English fermentation.

Noun

fem (nominative plural fems)

1. fermentation

Declension