vixen
Pluralvixens
- 1A sexually attractive woman who is racy or provocative; more loosely, any attractive woman.
In the film she plays a sultry vixen who lures the detective into a trap.
The perfume ad featured a red-lipped vixen in a leather jacket.
Similarcrumpet
- 2A female fox.
At dusk the vixen led her cubs out of the den to hunt along the hedgerow.
In late winter, the screams of vixens echo through the woods at night.
Similarshe-fox
Note
Fox has a feminine of its own, and this is it: an unrecorded Old English *fyxen, beside recorded fyxe, goes back to Proto-Germanic *fuhsinī, a female form of the animal's name. The v comes from the southern dialects of Middle English, which voiced an f at the start of a word, and the southern form displaced the earlier fixen. She-fox and foxess say the same thing more plainly.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Vixen means a female fox. en.wiktionary.org
- Proto-Germanic *fuhsinī is a feminine derivative of the word for fox. en.wiktionary.org
- The initial v comes from southern Middle English dialects that voiced initial f. en.wiktionary.org
- Vixen replaced the earlier form fixen. en.wiktionary.org
- She-fox is a synonym of vixen. en.wiktionary.org
- Foxess means a female fox. en.wiktionary.org
- 3A spiteful, quarrelsome or bad-tempered woman.
His landlady was a vixen who screamed at tenants over the smallest noise.
That little vixen stole my seat and then laughed about it!
Similarshrew, harpy, witch, dragon, hellcat
Note
Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) shows the construction this insult likes, an arrant vixen of a wife, which puts the judgment before the person, as in a brute of a man. George Eliot's Adam Bede (1859) gives it claws: a vixen is "a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish". Next to the alluring meaning, this one is less common, but it is still heard as an insult.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Henry Fielding wrote Tom Jones, first published in 1749. en.wikisource.org
- Tom Jones contains the exact phrase 'an arrant vixen of a wife'; the speaker is the Man of the Hill, recounting his father's marriage. gutenberg.org
- George Eliot wrote Adam Bede, first published in 1859. en.wikisource.org
- Adam Bede contains the exact description 'a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish', supplied by the narrator. gutenberg.org
Less common meaning
- 4A married woman who, with her husband's consent, has sex with other men.
Practice
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Origin
An alteration of earlier fixen, from Middle English fixen, from Old English *fyxen (compare fyxe, "female fox"), from Proto-Germanic *fuhsinī; the voiced v- comes from southern dialect forms of Middle English. Alternatively, it may come from the Old English adjective fyxen ("of the fox"), as in fixen hȳd ("fox skin").
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- The initial voiced v- comes from southern Middle English dialect forms. en.wikipedia.org
- An alternative derivation is from the Old English adjective fyxen, meaning “of the fox,” illustrated by fixen hȳd, “fox skin.” en.wiktionary.org