vixen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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]

vixen (plural vixens)

  1. A female fox.
    Synonyms: she-fox (rare), foxess (rare)
  2. A malicious, quarrelsome or temperamental woman. [from late 16th c.][2]
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:shrew
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:
      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.
    • 1859, George Eliot, Adam Bede, Köln: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, published 1999, page 54:
      […] 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.
    • 2002 June 2, WayForward, Shantae, Game Boy Color, level/area: Mimic's Dock:
      (Mimic): 'I used the plans to build a Steam Engine of my own. I was almost done when that vixen swiped it!'
  3. (colloquial) A racy or salacious woman who is sexually attractive; any attractive woman.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:promiscuous woman, Thesaurus:vamp
    Hyponym: silver vixen
  4. (colloquial) A wife who has sex with other men with her husband's consent.

female fox

temperamental woman

attractive woman — see fox

  1. ^ “fixen, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  2. ^ “vixen”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.