Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

dyke

/ˈdaɪ̯k/ noun, verb, proper noun

Forms dykes dyking dyked dike

  1. noun An earthwork raised to prevent inundation of low land by the sea or flooding rivers.
  2. noun (now chiefly Scotland) A low embankment or stone wall serving as an enclosure and boundary marker.
  3. noun A raised causeway.
  4. noun (historical) A long, narrow hollow dug from the ground to conduct water.
  5. noun (dialect) Any navigable watercourse.
  6. noun (dialect) Any watercourse.
  7. noun (dialect) Any small body of water.
  8. noun (geology) A body of rock (usually igneous) originally filling a fissure but now often rising above the older stratum as it is eroded away.
  9. verb (transitive or intransitive) To dig, particularly to create a ditch.
  10. verb (transitive) To surround with a ditch, to entrench.
  11. verb (transitive, Scotland) To surround with a low dirt or stone wall.
  12. verb (transitive or intransitive) To raise a protective earthwork against a sea or river.
  13. verb (transitive) To scour a watercourse.
  14. verb (transitive) To steep [fibers] within a watercourse.
  15. noun (slang, vulgar, usually derogatory and offensive) A lesbian, particularly one with masculine or butch traits or behavior.
  16. noun (loosely, slang, vulgar, usually derogatory and offensive) A non-heterosexual woman.
  17. noun (slang, vulgar, usually derogatory and offensive) A masculine woman.
  18. proper noun A village in Bourne parish, South Kesteven district, Lincolnshire, England, named after Car Dyke (OS grid ref TF1022).
  19. proper noun A small village in Moray council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NH9858).
  20. proper noun An unincorporated community in Greene County, Virginia, United States.

Synonyms

puddle pond pool lakelet mere den cave hole pit bank embankment dam levee breakwater floodwall seawall ditch trench fosse earthwork butch dike

Etymology

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 dīk (“dam”). See also ditch.
Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dīkiją (“trench, ditch”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“stick into, pierce; dig, stick a spade into”). The semantic evolution (also seen in several cognate words) was from "stick (a spade) into" to "dig" to "hole or other product of digging", "excavation", then the ridge of earth created when excavating a ditch, then to a ridge of earth intended to prevent flooding.

Uncertain. Attested since the 1940s (in Berrey and Van den Bark’s 1942 American Thesaurus of Slang) or 30s. 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 this is not found in connection 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); compare dike (“noun: well-dressed man; verb: be well dressed”)), bulldyker, and bulldyking, 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 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. It has also been suggested dyke is a shortening of morphodyke, 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.

* As an English surname, from the noun dyke.
* As a Dutch surname, Americanized from Dijk (also compare Dyck).

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun See Dike. The spelling dyke is restricted by some to the geological meaning.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “dyke”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details

Sanskrit

Sanskrit dictionary entries whose meaning includes “dyke” (best matches first).