vixen

• fixen, vixon (both obsolete)

Alteration of earlier fixen, from Middle English fixen, either from Old English *fyxen, from Proto-West Germanic *fuhsini; synchronically analyzable as fox +‎ -en, the voiced v- being from the Southern dialectal forms of Middle English; or from the Old English adjective fyxen (“of the fox”), as in the phrase fixen hȳd (“fox skin”; compare Middle English foxen fox).[1]

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɪk.sən/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪksən, -ɪksɪn

vixen (plural vixens)

1. A female fox.
2. A malicious, quarrelsome or temperamental woman.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC:

     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.

   • 2002 June 2, WayForward, Shantae, Game Boy Color, level/area: Mimic's Dock:

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

3. (colloquial) A racy or salacious woman who is sexually attractive.
4. (colloquial) A wife who has sex with other men with her husband's consent.
   • 2018, ‘Stag’ men love watching other guys have sex with their wives… but it’s not cuckolding

     The stag gets a thrill from watching his vixen have sex with another man.

• (malicious, quarrelsome or temperamental woman): See Thesaurus:shrew
• (racy or salacious woman): See Thesaurus:promiscuous woman or Thesaurus:vamp
• (female fox): foxess

• (female fox): fox

• (female fox): dog-fox, reynard, tod; (male fox)

• bull
• cuckold
• cuckquean
• stag

• invex