vixen

Alternative forms

• fixen (obsolete)
• vixon (obsolete)

Etymology

Alteration of fixen (“female fox”), from Middle English fixen, from Old English fixen, *fyxen, fyxe (“female fox”), from Proto-Germanic *fuhsinjō (“female fox”). Voiced v- is from the Southern dialectal forms of Middle English. Compare German Füchsin (“female fox”). See also fox.

Pronunciation

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• Rhymes: -ɪksən
• Rhymes: -ɪksɪn

Noun

vixen (plural vixens)

1. A female fox.
2. A malicious, quarrelsome or temperamental woman.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, London: A[ndrew] Millar, OCLC 928184292:

     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: page 54. Köln: Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1999:

     . . . 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.

3. (colloquial) A racy or salacious woman.

Anagrams

• invex