vixen
pronunciation
How to pronounce vixen in British English:
UK [ˈvɪksn]
How to pronounce vixen in American English:
US [ˈvɪksən]
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- Noun:
- a malicious fierce-tempered woman
Word Origin
- vixen
- vixen: [15] The only Old English word on record for a ‘female fox’ is fyxe. Fixene first appears in the late Middle English period. It was formed using the suffix -en, denoting ‘female’. This was once quite common – Old English had biren ‘female bear’, for instance, and gyden ‘goddess’ – but it now survives only in vixen. (Its German counterpart, -in, is still a live suffix.) The initial v of vixen comes from southwestern England.=> fox
- vixen (n.)
- Old English *fyxen (implied in adjective fyxan), fem. of fox (see fox (n.) and cognate with Middle High German vühsinne, German füchsin). Solitary English survival of the Germanic feminine suffix -en, -in (also in Old English gyden "goddess;" mynecen "nun," from munuc "monk;" wlyfen "she-wolf," etc.). The figurative sense "ill-tempered woman" is attested from 1570s. The spelling shift from -f- to -v- began late 1500s (see V).
Example
- 1. Oh , you don 't tell me . The little vixen .
- 2. Why do you have only one child , dear dame ? Asked the vixen .
- 3. He pointed to the flashy lifestyle of flame-haired vixen anna chapman , whose real name is anya kushchenko , as flying in the face of how spying is done .
- 4. You know dasher and dancer and prancer and vixen comet and cupid and donner and blitzen .
- 5. The professor has been calling key a vixen ( fox ) for a certain period of time .