eye dialect
nounEtymology From eye + dialect, by analogy with eye rhyme. First used by George Philip Krapp in The English Language in America (1925) in reference to written dialogue that uses nonstandard spelling but does not indicate an unusual pronunciation.
1
Nonstandard spellings which, although they indicate a standard pronunciation, are deliberately substituted in place of the standard spellings, often to indicate that a speaker's regular use of language is nonstandard or dialectal.
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:eye dialect.
2
A set of such nonstandard spellings, collectively used to reflect a certain form of speech.
- Related terms
- eye rhyme, pronunciation spelling, literary dialect, dialect spelling, dialect respelling