tabby

Mackerel, a tabby cat

5 November 2025

Most of us know that a tabby cat is either a female house cat or one with a striped or brindled coat regardless of its sex. But tabby can also refer to an elderly woman. Where does the word come from? It has a convoluted and somewhat uncertain etymology.

The English word is borrowed from a number of European languages: the French tabis, in Old French atabis; the Spanish tabi; the Portuguese tabi; and the Italian tabi. These all in turn come from the medieval Latin attabi, which was taken from the Arabic ‘attābī, which is a reference to al-’Attābīya, a neighborhood of Baghdad. This quarter of the city is named for Attab ibn Asid, the first governor of Mecca following its conquest by Muhammad. Tabby, and its ancestors in these other languages, originally referred to silk taffeta, which was woven in the Baghdad neighborhood. The cloth was originally striped but later came to be used for cloth of a single color that was waved or watered.

But the senses of tabby meaning a female cat may have a distinct origin. While it most likely also comes from the idea of streaks of color, it may come from the name Tabitha.

Tabby appears in English as early as 1638 referring to the cloth. It appears in a letter from Thomas Verney to his father requesting items he needs to establish himself in Barbados:

Now for some necessaries concerning myself. As first, for one good cloth sute, and one taby or good stuff sute.

The connection to felines is in place by 1664, when it appears as an adjective in George Etherege’s play The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub:

Laugh but one minute longer I will foreswear Thy company, kill thy Tabby Cat, and make thee weep For ever after.

The noun appears by 1774, when Oliver Goldsmith uses it in a description of civets in his History of the Earth:

This animal varies in colour, being sometimes streaked, as in our kind of cats called Tabbies.

The application of the adjective to older women appears as early as 1748 in Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa:

With horrible grave faces was I received. The two antiques only bowed their tabby heads; making longer faces than ordinary; and all the old lines appearing strong in their furrow’d foreheads and fallen cheeks.

Here tabby is referring to various shades of gray hair on the two women’s heads. But within a few years, the word was being used as a noun for elderly women. From George Colman’s 1761 play The Jealous Wife:

L[ady]. Free[love] Lud! lud! What shall I do with Them? Why do these foolish Women come troubling me now? I must wait on Them in the Dressing-Room, and You must execute the Card, Harriot, till They are gone. I’ll dispatch Them as soon as I can, but Heaven knows when I shall get rid of Them, for They are both everlasting Gossips; tho’ the Words come from her Ladyship, one by one, like Drops from a Sill, while the other tiresome Woman overwhelms Us with a Flood of Impertinence. Harriot, You’ll entertain his Lordship till I return. (Exit.

L[ord]. Trink[et]. ’Pon Honour, I am not sorry for the coming in of these old tabbies, and am much obliged to her Ladyship for leaving us such an agreeable Tête-à-Tête.

Har[riot] Your Lordship will find Me extreamly bad Company.

L. Trink. Not in the least, my Dear!

The sense of a female cat was in place by the early nineteenth century. Note that this comes quite a bit later than the application of tabby to women. Whereas the use in relation to women clearly comes from the idea of streaks of color, in this case gray hairs, the use in relation to female cats may come from the name Tabitha, in contrast to tomcat, from the name Thomas, used for male cats. We see this sense in an 1826 revision of James Townley’s play High Life Below Stairs of that year:

Lovel. Didn’t you hear a noise, Charles?

Free[man]. Somebody sneezed, I thought.

Lovel. (rises) There are thieves in the house. I’ll be among ’em. (takes a pistol)

Kitty. Lack-a-day! sir, it was only the cat. They sometimes sneeze for all the world like a Christian. Here, Jack, Jack; he has got a cold, sir; puss, puss.

Lovel. (going towards R. door) A cold, then I’ll cure him. Here, Jack, Jack; Puss, puss.

Kitty. Your honour won’t be rash. Pray, your honour, don’t. (opposing)

Lovel. Stand off! Here, Freeman; here’s a barrel for business, with a brace of slugs, and well primed as you see. Freeman, I’ll hold five to four—Nay, I’ll hold you two to one, I hit the cat through the key-hole of that pantry door.

Free. Try, try; but I think it impossible.

Lovel. I am a good marksman—a dead shot. (cocks the pistol, and points it at the pantry door) Now for it! One, two three. (a violent shriek, and the door is thrown open, all is discovered) Who the devil are all these? One, two, three, four. Why, Mrs. Kitty, your cat has kittened—two Toms and two Tabbies!

Philip. They are particular friends of mine, sir; servants to some noblemen in the neighbourhood.

The line reading “two Toms and two Tabbies” doesn’t appear in the original 1759 version of the play. In the scan of the 1763 printing in the HathiTrust Digital Library, the printed line ends with “four—”, after which someone, at some unknown date, has penciled in, “Pray Mrs. Kitty whose Cats are these?”

From the available evidence, we can’t say for certain why we call female cats tabbies. It may come from the sense of striped cats, or it may come from the name Tabitha, or perhaps both influenced the sense.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. tabby, n. & adj.

Colman, George. The Jealous Wife. London: J. Newbery, et al., 1761, 2.3, 38. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Etherege, George. The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub. London: Henry Herringman, 1664, 4.7, 65. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Goldsmith, Oliver. An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature, vol. 3. London: J. Nourse, 1774, 3.390. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1910, s.v. tabby, n. & adj.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. London: John Osborn, et al., 1748, 6.98. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Townley, James. High Life Below Stairs, revised edition. London: Thoms Hailes Lacy, 2.1, 30. HathiTrust Digital Library. 1763 edition, HathiTrust Digital Library.

Verney, Thomas. Letter, 20 May 1638. In John Bruce, ed. Letters and Papers of The Verney Family. London: John Bowyer Nichols and Sons, 1853, 197. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Shadow460, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

stiff upper lip

3 November 2025

Having a stiff upper lip is considered the quintessential British quality of resolution in the face of adversity. But surprisingly, the phrase itself is an American import.

The earliest use of the phrase that I’m aware of appears in a 6 November 1811 report on U.S. Congressional action, or rather inaction, in the buildup to the War of 1812:

There will be much talk and little business this session—War is out of the question, but it was resolved in caucus last Sunday evening to look big and keep a stiff upper lip.

And indeed, early uses of the phrase centered on the prospects of war between the United States and England. From the Trenton Federalist of 9 December 1811:

The committee of Congress, to whom was referred the subject of our Foreign Affairs, have brot [sic] in their report, and 6 resolutions at the end of it. Like the President in his message, this committee seem determined that there shall not be cause for charging them with a want of spirt. They come forth with a bold front and stiff upper-lip, and talk most woefully and indignantly against poor John Bull—So that now, if we have not war with old England in right good earnest, neither the President nor the committee on foreign relations, can be blamed.

And the full phrase keep a stiff upper lip makes its debut on 18 January 1812 in a restaurant advertisement for Stiff’s Oyster House that not only references the possibility of war but that also makes play on words with stiff, demonstrating that the phrase had rather widespread currency:

But, what a cheerful reflection it is, that in these perilous times we have one comfort left that all the nations of the earth combined cannot deprive us of! Notwithstanding the comet, eclipses, earthquakes and tempests, Indian wars and British orders in council, we have the pleasing certainty, that go when we will to Stiff’s Oyster-house, No. 22 Fayette street, we can get as good Liquors, Oysters and Terrapins as ever gladdened the heart of man. By [t]he bye, my fellow-citizens, let us keep a STIFF upper lip, for never since mortal man wore hair upon his head was there seen better TERRAPINS than is now at No. 22 Fayette street. Those who have any doubts on the subject, are respectfully invited to call and remove them as soon as possible, and instead of riding to Canada on their backs, take my advice and put them in their bellies.

THOMAS STIFF.
New Beer and Oyster House, No. 22, Fayette street

It would take some time for the phrase to cross the Atlantic. The earliest use of the phrase in a British publication that I have found is actually by the Nova Scotian humorist Thomas Chandler Haliburton, writing under the pen name Sam Slick. It appears in Cleave’s Gazette of Variety on 16 March 1839. In the years that follow, the phrase appears rather often in British papers, but always by North American writers.

In 1851 we get this nugget, which is a rewording of a piece from an American newspaper that had been reprinted several times in British papers. But in this instance, the editors have removed the Americanisms in the piece, with the exception of keep a stiff upper lip, and changed dollars to pounds. From London’s The Lady’s Newspaper of 5 April:

L. L. L. requests the following to be inserted as a bit of advice:—“Never make a poor mouth, but if you are wise you will always affect independence. If you are poor, don’t let folks know it, or they will discover in you ten thousand blemishes—a host of defects, which would never be discovered, or at least never talked about, if you kept a stiff upper lip, and carried yourself as if you had ten thousand pounds, instead of but ten, at your command.

And a few years later, we finally get the phrase used in an entirely British context. Again it’s in reference to a war, this time to the Crimean War. From the York Herald of 21 January 1854:

The electric telegraph will shortly be adopted in our possessions in Asia, and as Lord Palmerston had said, “so universal will telegraph communication become, that if the minister be asked in the House of Commons, whether war had broken out in India, he might answer, wait a minute, I will telegraph the Governor-General in Calcutta, and let you know.” Even now, however, we were enabled, said the lecturer, to communicate hundreds of miles, and tell our friends that the same noble lord had—but not before it was wanted—put a stiff upper lip to Russia.

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Sources:

“The Committee of Congress.” Trenton Federalist (New Jersey), 9 December 1811, 3/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Correspondence.” The Lady’s Newspaper (London), 5 April 1851, 185. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

“From Our Correspondent” (6 November 1811). Philadelphia Gazette (Pennsylvania), 9 November 1811, 3/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“Mark! Read Learn and Digest.” Baltimore Whig (Maryland), 18 January 1812, 2/2. . Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1916, s. v. stiff, adj., n., and adv.

“The Progress of the Nation.” York Herald (England), 21 January 1854, 6/5. Gale Primary Sources: British Library Newspapers.

Slick, Sam [Thomas Chandler Haliburton]. “Too Many Irons in the Fire.” Cleave’s Gazette of Variety, 16 March 1839, 4/2. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Image credit: UK Government, 1939. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

hoax / hocus

Scientists examining the skull of Piltdown Man, perhaps the most notorious scientific hoax ever perpetrated

31 October 2025

Hoax comes to us as a variant of hocus, which in turn is from the incantation hocus pocus, used in stage magic. The word hoax first appears in the mid eighteenth century as a verb meaning to ridicule. It evidently was current in university slang for several decades before seeing its way into print. The earliest example I have found is in a poem written by a student at Oxford c. 1750 that was published in 1781:

Am I, or am I not imprudent,
In begging you to accept “The Student?”
Here lies the point—if good no wonder—
But how you hoax us, if we blunder!
    “Dame Oxford muster all her friends,
    Each duteous son assistance lends;
    All, all encourage him to print on,
    Alumn’ Westminst’, et Alumn’ Winton’,
    The Chartreau’ sons, and sons of Eton,
    (Thanks for my frank, and rhyme, to Clayton—
    No wonder poor ‘Syl. Urban’s’ beaten”—
    This will be said, Sir, if we shine—
But if we write one faulty line,
How will the critics then bespatter
With foul reproaches Alma Mater!

And the gerund form appears in the 1788 second edition of Francis Grose’s slang dictionary:

HOAXING. Bantering, ridiculing. Hoaxing a quiz; joking an odd fellow. University wit.

The noun appears several times in Mary Ann Hanway’s 1800 novel Andrew Stuart. There is this in the third volume of the work:

When attended by witnesses, I claim you as my wife, the deceived Peer, thus outwitted, will be obliged to relinquish the pursuit, and consent to come down a pretty large sum, to stop the clamours of an injured husband; for he dares not abide the hoax of his noble colleagues in sin, the furious reproaches of his Laurina, or the award of the Court of the King’s Bench, who would assuredly give me swinging damages, as it would make the third time of his name being registered in the archives of Doctors Commons, for such high crimes and misdemeanours; thereby adding celebrity, by his puissant name, to the increasing catalogue of most noble and right honourable seducers!

And in the fourth volume, when it is suggested that the character Elmira Stuart might consent to marry the protagonist, her cousin:

“I should not be surprised,” added Mr. Blundel, smiling significantly at the company, “if from the events of this morning, she should avow her intention of still retaining the name of Stuart.”—A consciousness of the allusion made Andrew blush deeply; for which he was obliged to stand the hoax of the jovial party, who insisted that all should drink success to the happy idea of their host in a bumper.

The sense we know today, that of a joke, deception, or fraud played on a person is in place about the same time. From Ann Plumptre’s 1801 novel Something New:

Mrs. Harrison, over whose countenance the bright sunshine of serenity had been gradually spreading itself ever since the compliment paid her by the Doctor, was by this time so much recovered as to be capable of thinking of a hoax again. Perceiving therefore an admirable opportunity for one here presented, she whispered me, “Let’s have a little fun with the Doctor.” Then turning to him she said, “Why, Doctor, I think you mentioned that you had got the sermon in your pocket. I don’t see why we should wait for Sunday, ca’n’t [sic] you read it to us now?”

But words rarely arise ex nihilo; they come from somewhere, and hoax is no exception. It is a variation of hocus, a noun meaning a trick or deception or a verb meaning to execute such a deception. That in turn is from the phrase hocus pocus, extending a metaphor of stage magician’s illusion to a deception or scam.

We see the noun hocus in a 3 February 1654 letter by John Thurloe, spymaster for Oliver Cromwell and secretary to the council of state during the Protectorate:

That his hocus was to seduce the scilley multitude, and juggle theire meanes into his pocket, appeared by the continuall gatherings at home and abroade (which wee thinke, is one chiefe reason, why those Journymen, that factiously joyne with him, doe follow his steps in exclaymeing against the government) that they might procure to themselves such like profitts, and why wee judged him a perfect hypocrite, was then related.

Use of hocus as a verb dates to at least 1675, when it appears in Richard Head’s Proteus redivivus, or, The Art of Wheeling or Insinuation:

Again, they complain of their trusting too, as well as your Worships; where lies the difference then since you are both Creditors; and were you in their condition, I question, though you now complain of their Knavery, whether you would not be as very Knaves as themselves; you rail at them, and they again at others. The Mercer cries, Was ever Man so Hocuss'd? however, I have enough to maintain me here, and cries, Hang sorrow, cast away care. 

Three years later, in 1678, Aphra Behn uses hocus as an adjective in her play Sir Patient Fancy, although that play would not appear in print for nearly a decade:

Alas! a Poet’s good for nothing now,
Unless he have the knack of conjuring too;
For ’tis beyond all natural Sense to guess
How their strange Miracles were brought to pass.
Your Presto Jack be gone, and come again,
With all the Hocus art of Legerdemain.

An open letter of 23 December 1701 addressed to newly elected members of Parliament continues the use of hocus:

All the Dust that is raised, with the stir and clutter of a War with France, is in earnest wholly design'd to blind your Eyes, and to keep you from searching. These State-Juglers wou’d by all means have you fix your Observation far enough from their Fingers; for there the slight is to be play’d, and a clear conveyance to be made of your Mony. So that when they set you upon your Guard against France, it were worth your looking about to see whether they are not then making a Property of you for themselves. But tho’ such Legerdemain Tricks and Stories may pass at Clubs and Coffee-houses, ‘tis hoped they will never be so fatally successful, as to make a Hocus of a House of Commons.

And John Floyer’s 1702 encomium to the virtues of a cold bath calls the belief that bathing in cold water is harmful a Guinea Hocus (i.e., a foolish hoax):

An Ingenious Man used to call this Fellow the Physick Town-Top, a Log of Wood, with a Brass Nose, that was lash’d and kept up by other Mens Mettle, more than his own, whose Excellency lies in a Row of silly worn out threadbare, chaw’d-over Stories and Jests, such as serve to make Fool’s laugh, and Wise Men shake their Heads. Such another Guinea Hocus as this, I was in Consultation with, as sort of a Town-Top too, tho’ not so very wooden, as the other.

This use of hocus would be picked by university students in the ensuing decades and transformed into hoax. The Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for hoax refers to doubts as to this origin that arise because of a lack of citations of the use of hocus in the eighteenth century. But the OED entry is old, penned in 1898, and yet to be updated. Nowadays, with the digitization of books and other material from that era, we find many examples of hocus in the eighteenth century. So this origin stands on firmer ground than the OED currently intimates.

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Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. hoax, n.

Behn, Aphra. “Prologue” to Sir Patient Fancy (1678). In Plays Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, vol. 4. London: Mary Poulson, 1724, 4. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Floyer, John. An Ancient Psychrolousia Revived: or, an Essay to Prove Cold Bathing Both Safe and Useful. London: Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, 1702, 297. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, second edition. London: S. Hooper, 1788, s.v. hoaxing, sig. P2. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Hanway, Mary Ann. Andrew Stuart, or the Northern Wanderer, London: Minerva Press, 1800, 3:319–20 and 4:107–08. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Head, Richard. Proteus redivivus, or, The Art of Wheeling or Insinuation. London: W. D. 1675, 322. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

A Letter to New Member of the Ensuing Parliament. London, 23 December 1701, 5. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1898, s.v. hoax, n., hoax, v., hocus, v., hocus, n., hocus-pocus, n., adj., & adv., hocus-pocus, v.

Plumptre, Anne. Something New: or, Adventures at Campbell-House, vol. 2 of 3. London: A. Strahan, 1801, 2:179. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Thurloe, John. “A Vindication against the Complaints of Mr. Rogers, address’d to Edward Dandy, Esq.” (3 February 1654). In A Collection of State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., vol. 3 of 7. Thomas Birch, ed. London: Thomas Woodward, 1742, 137. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

“To a Friend” (c. 1750). In J. Nichols, ed. A Select Collection of Poems with Notes, vol. 7. London: 1781, 316. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Image credit: John Cooke, 1915. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.

measles / measly

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of a measles virus (red)

29 October 2025

(Edit, 30 Oct 2025: added measly)

Measles is a potentially fatal, but vaccine-preventable, disease caused by a Morbillivirus, and it is one of the most highly contagious diseases that infect humans. The disease, once rendered rare in the industrialized world, has made a comeback in recent years, largely due to low rates of vaccination. The disease is considered by many to be a “childhood illness” and more of a nuisance than a threat, but measles commonly leads to serious and permanent, even fatal, complications. But the name measles is an odd one with an innocuous connotation that belies how dangerous the disease really is. Where does the name measles come from?

The name measles is also sometimes applied to the parasitical disease cysticercocsis, which primarily infects pigs but which can infect humans, as well. That disease, which can cause cysts on the skin that resemble those caused by Morbillivirus, hence both names, is caused by a tapeworm and is biologically unrelated. It is this sense of measles that gives us the adjective measly. The use of measly to refer to infected pork dates to the late sixteenth century, and in the mid nineteenth century it generalized, coming to refer to anything considered inferior or of little value or anything that was blotchy or spotted.

Measles comes from a Germanic root, but its exact route into English is uncertain. It appears by the early fourteenth century and is either a borrowing of the Middle Dutch masels, the Middle Low German maselen, or both. Both of these Germanic etymons are plural, just like the English word. The Old Saxon masala is a blood blister, and the disease’s name comes from the red pustules that appear on the skin during the course of the disease.

The first known use of the word in English is from before 1325 in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Tretiz. Bibbesworth, an Essex knight, wrote the treatise to instruct English speakers in Anglo-Norman French vocabulary. He glosses the Anglo-Norman word rugeroles with maseles (or maselinges depending on which manuscript you consult). Rugerole literally means “red poppy” and was used to refer to the red rash caused by a sexually transmitted infection (which one or ones is uncertain). And in early use the word was used to refer to any disease that caused red spots.

The use of measles to refer to a sexually transmitted infection also gave us the now obsolete mesel, originally referring to leprosy or other skin diseases and later extended to those who were generally considered repellent. This word also first appears in English around the year 1300, but it is of a very different origin, coming from the Anglo-Norman mesel, meaning “leprous, leper, repellent person” and ultimately from the Latin misellus, meaning “poor, wretched.” At the time, leprosy was thought to result from sinful sexual behavior. These Latin and Anglo-Norman words undoubtedly had an influence on the spelling and pronunciation of measles, but they’re not the direct origin of the modern English word.

The form maselinges in one copy of Bibbesworth’s treatise can still be found in the form measlings in certain regions of Britain. This form comes to English via Scandinavia (compare the Swedish mässlingen, the Danish mæslinger, and the Icelandic mislingar—all plural forms), but this Scandinavian form comes from the Dutch/Low German word, just like the more common measles.

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Sources:

Anglo-Norman Dictionary, AND2 Phase5 (R–S), 2018–21, s.v. [rugeole], n., rugerole, n., rugerolé, n.; AND2 Phase 3 (I/Y–M), 2008–12, mesel1, n.

Middle English Dictionary, 4 March 2025, s.v. masel, n.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, March 2001, s.v. measles, n., measlings, n., measle, adj., mesel, adj. & n., measle, v., measly, adj.

Sayers, William, “A Popular View of Sexually Transmitted Disease in Late Thirteenth-Century Britain.” Mediaevistik, vol. 23, 2010, 187–96 at 192–94. JSTOR.

Image credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 2024. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.

dyke

“Dykes on Bikes,” Stockholm (Sweden) Pride, 2010

27 October 2025

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 Washinging [sic], 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 man 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. “Lady lovers” are by no means rare. I might add that a good many cases of such practice are to be found among nurses as well as among actresses. Such women seldom marry. Because of their dislike for men they are, as a rule, looked upon by the community as virtuous.

Bulldiker and the adjective bulldycking appear in two 1920s Harlem Renaissance novels. The first is Carl van Vechten’s 1926 N[——] Heaven. In the passage a man and a woman are discussing where to go to dance:

Winter Palace? She inquired.
A nasty shadow flitted across Anatole’s face.
Naw, he retorted. Too many ofays an’ jigchasers.
Bowie Wilcox’s is dicty.
Too many monks.
Atlantic City Joe’s?
Too many pink-chasers an’ bulldikers.
Where den?
Duh Black Venus.

And the second is Claude McKay’s 1928 Home to Harlem, in which it appears in the lyrics to a song that is “an old tune, so far as popular tunes go”:

And it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
Can you show me a woman that a man can trust?

Oh, baby, how are you?
Oh, baby, what are you?
Oh, can I have you now?
Or have I got to wait?
Oh, let me have a date,
Why do you hesitate?

And there is two things in Harlem I don't understan'
It is a bulldycking woman and a faggotty man.

Oh, baby how are you?
Oh, baby, what are you? …

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, which is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary:

Benches in the more obscure parts are used continually by couples, pansies and dykes.

Finally, the form bull-dagger appears by Apri 1932, when it appears in an opinion issued by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Burns v. State:

The appellant urges here as error the refusal of the court to permit him to prove, by several witnesses, that the appellant had information from these witnesses that Betty May Griffin was a degenerate, not a proper person to associate with his wife, and that this degenerate woman would likely debauch his wife. We here quote from the record the statement of the appellant’s counsel in the court below as to this excluded evidence: “And so the defendant told that the deceased, Betty May Bay-ford, was a degenerate, commonly called a ‘bull-dagger,’ and that it would be well for him to keep his wife out of her company. I further offer to prove by Jessie Bunns that on the same day Saturday immediately preceding the day of the killing, he had a conversation with the deceased in which he accused the deceased of being a bull-dagger, degenerate, told her that she should not go with the wife of the deceased, and that she then told him that, the witness, that he would go with her, and that he would not be interfered with by the defendant, and if he did interfere that she would do him great bodily harm, that by other witnesses that the general reputation of the deceased was that of the degenerate woman, practiced immoral habits with women, and further then by the defendant that these threats were communicated to him prior to the time of the homicide.”

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 sometimes 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.

Discuss this post

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Sources:

Burns v. State, 141 So. 278, 163 Miss. 258, 1932 Miss. LEXIS 36. Courtlistener.com.

“Celestial and Negro Quarrel.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 26 May 1896, 8/6. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 27 October 2025, s.v. dyke, n., bull-dyke, n., bull-dagger, n. in bull, n.1.

Krantz, Susan E. “Reconsidering the Etymology of Bulldike.” American Speech, Summer 1995, 70:2, 217–21.

Lichtenstein, Perry M. “The ‘Fairy’ and the Lady Lover.” Medical Review of Reviews, vol. 27, no. 8, August 1921, 373/1. HathiTrust Digital Library.

McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928, 36–37. HathiTrust Digital Library.

“Miscellaneous.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 12 November 1892, 7/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

“A Negress Runs Amuck.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 28 July 1892, 8/2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary online, June 2018, s.v. dyke n., bull dyke, n., bulldagger, n., bull-dyking, adj.

Parke, Joseph Richardson. Human Sexuality. Philadelphia: Professional Pub. Co., 1906, 309. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Spears, Richard A. “On the Etymology of Dike.” American Speech, Winter 1985, 60:4, 318–27.

“Stole Valuable Papers.” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), 24 September 1893, 5/3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

van Vechten, Carl. N[——]r Heaven. New York: Knopf, 1926, 12. HathiTrust Digital Library.

Photo credit: Frankie Fouganthin, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.