vixen

Definition

A female fox.

Etymology

Alteration of earlier fixen, from Middle English fixen, from Old English *fyxen (compare also Old English fyxe (“female fox”)), from Proto-West Germanic *fuhsini, from Proto-Germanic *fuhsinī; the voiced v- comes from the Southern dialectal forms of Middle English. Alternatively, from the Old English adjective fyxen (“of the fox”), as in the phrase fixen hȳd (“fox skin”; compare Middle English foxen fox).

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "[…] 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."
• "(Mimic): 'I used the plans to build a Steam Engine of my own. I was almost done when that vixen swiped it!'"

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