3 September 2020
A dyke is a lesbian or a woman whose appearance is regarded as masculine, with the implication that she is a lesbian. The word was originally a slur and is still offensive in many contexts—particularly when used by cis-gendered, heterosexual men—although it has been reclaimed as a positive or neutral term by the LBGTQ community. Much of the word’s origin is not known, but dyke appears in print c.1930 and is most likely a clipping of the older bull dyke and bulldyker. But the origin of these older terms remains a mystery with several plausible explanations. First, the facts:
The earliest known appearance of bulldyke is actually as a nickname for a man. From Chicago’s Daily Inter Ocean of 28 July 1892:
With the idea of killing off a portion of the women in the levee district Hattie Washington, a colored woman, started out at 6:30 o’clock yesterday afternoon with a big revolver in her hand.
She went to Blanche Alexander’s place on Custom House place in search of Belle Watkins, who, she said, had won the affections of Harvey Neal, alias “Bulldyke.” Belle got wind of her coming, and made her escape, but as soon as the woman got inside of the house she began firing right and left.
The same paper on 12 November 1892 ran a short note about Hattie Washington, out on bail, stabbing Harvey Neal with a small knife. Unfortunately, we don’t know how this story ended. But the paper on 24 September 1893 reports Washington being arrested again for pickpocketing. How, if at all, this nickname relates to the later sense of the word is uncertain, but the fact that in this case Bulldyke refers to a masculine person and the fact that both Washington and Neal were Black may provide a clue as to the term’s origin.
The earliest recorded use of dyke to refer to a lesbian is in the form bulldyker. From Joseph Parke’s 1906 book Human Sexuality:
In American homosexual argot, female inverts, or lesbian lovers, are known euphemistically as “bulldykers,” whatever that may mean: at least that is the sobriquet in the “Red Light” district of Philadelphia.
The above quotation is from a note to the following in the main text:
In all large cities there are coteries of these inverts. In Vienna, according to Krafft-Ebing, they call themselves “sisters,” in other places “aunts,” the same writer stating that two very masculine prostitutes, in the city named, who lived in perverse sexual relations with each other, had informed a correspondent that the name “uncle” was applied to women of a similar character.
Parke is not simply using the term as a synonym for lesbian but seems to be implying that it also connotes “masculine” characteristics, which would align with the earlier use of Bulldyke as a man’s nickname.
Bull diking appears in a 1921 article by Perry Lichtenstein in the journal Medical Review of Reviews as a slang term for tribadism or scissoring:
How do these people gain sexual satisfaction? By friction of the clitoris. The following case will illustrate: I had occasion to make a mental and physical examination of a young woman in whose case the Court of General Sessions had appointed a lunacy commission. She was found sane. She stated that she had indulged in the practice of “bull diking,” as she termed it. She was a prisoner in one of the reformatories, and there a certain young woman fell in love with her. This second young woman was a waitress. One morning while the young woman to whom I was talking was in bed the other young woman entered and sat down on the bed. She put her arms around the defendant and squeezed and kissed her. She then jumped into the bed and lifting the other’s clothes had intercourse with her by friction of the clitoris. After that morning the practice was continued with regularity.
Bulldiker and the adjective bulldycking appear in two 1920s Harlem Renaissance novels. The first is Carl van Vechten’s 1926 N[——] Heaven:
“Atlantic City Joe’s?” “Too many pink-chasers an’ bulldikers.” “Where den?”
And the second is Claude McKay’s 1928 Home to Harlem:
And there is two things in Harlem I don't understan'. It is a bulldycking woman and a faggotty man.
The shorter dyke is in place by 1931, when it appears in the tabloid New Broadway Brevities, which featured articles and news items of a sexually titillating nature. From the 31 August 1931 issue:
Benches in the more obscure parts are used continually by couples, pansies and dykes.
Finally, the form bull-dagger appears by 1932, when the Southern Reporter records the following:
The defendant told that the deceased, Betty May [...], was a degenerate, commonly called a “bull-dagger,” and that it would be well [...] to keep his wife out of her company.
The above quotations cover the spectrum of early uses and variations. They provide clues to the origin but nothing definitive. We can say with confidence that dyke is a clipping of the older bulldyke. It also seems likely that bulldyke arose in American Black slang. While neither Parke nor Lichtenstein refer to the race of their subjects, the 1892 Black man’s nickname and the two Harlem Renaissance novels indicate that it was present in Black speech. But little beyond these two conclusions can be asserted with confidence, and what follows is informed speculation.
Let’s take the two elements, bull- and -dyke, separately.
It is a reasonable assumption that the bull- is a reference to masculinity. But Susan Krantz has suggested that the bull- may be a reference to falsity, as in bullshit or a lot of bull.
As to the second element, the best guess is that -dyke is variation on dick, either as a generic term for a man or meaning a penis. Thus, Harvey “Bulldyke” Neal may have been a large, exceptionally masculine man, and the term connoting masculinity later transferred from men to lesbians. If the penis sense was intended, then bulldyke might refer to size and connote the mistaken folk belief that lesbians have large clitorises or that the clitoris is some sort of false penis. The form bulldagger, while appearing later, is almost certainly a folk etymology that tries to make sense of the -dyke element by changing it to something familiar, in this case, something phallic and penetrative.
Older references may speculate that that dyke is a variation on either hermaphrodite or morphodite, but this explanation is no longer considered viable and there is no good evidence supporting it. The shift from -dite to -dike is phonologically unlikely, and there is only one early instance of it. Wider use of the spelling morphodike only appears decades later and is likely influenced by dyke, not the other way around. Also, while both hermaphrodite and morphodite are old terms for those with same-sex attraction, both were general terms referring to both men and women, and neither specialized to refer only to lesbians.
To sum up, we don’t know the origin of dyke with any certainty, but there are a number of intriguing possibilities. Perhaps if we find more early uses, the origin will become clearer.
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