vixen

noun
/ˈvɪk.sən/

Etymology

Alteration of earlier fixen, from Middle English fixen, from Old English *fyxen (compare also Old English fyxe (“female fox”)), from Proto-West Germanic *fuhsini, from Proto-Germanic *fuhsinī; the voiced v- comes from the Southern dialectal forms of Middle English. Alternatively, from the Old English adjective fyxen (“of the fox”), as in the phrase fixen hȳd (“fox skin”; compare Middle English foxen fox).

  1. inherited from *fuhsinī
  2. inherited from *fuhsini
  3. inherited from *fyxen
  4. inherited from fixen

Definitions

  1. A female fox.

  2. A malicious, quarrelsome or temperamental woman.

    • He was prudent and industrious, and so good a husbandman, that he might have led a very easy and comfortable life, had not an arrant vixen of a wife soured his domestic quiet.
    • […] and if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dripping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye–a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish.
    • (Mimic): 'I used the plans to build a Steam Engine of my own. I was almost done when that vixen swiped it!'
  3. A racy or salacious woman who is sexually attractive

    A racy or salacious woman who is sexually attractive; any attractive woman.

  4. + 2 more definitions
    1. A wife who has sex with other men with her husband's consent.

      • 2018, ‘Stag’ men love watching other guys have sex with their wives… but it’s not cuckolding The stag gets a thrill from watching his vixen have sex with another man.
    2. The fourth reindeer of Santa Claus.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for vixen. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA