eye dialect

noun

1. the literary use of misspellings that are intended to convey a speaker's lack of education or use of humorously dialectal pronunciations but that are actually no more than respellings of standard pronunciations, as wimmin for “women,” wuz for “was,” and peepul for “people.”

Spelling Note

Eye Dialect is used as a label for such misspellings in this dictionary.

Word History and Origins

Origin of eye dialect¹

First recorded in 1920–25

Example Sentences

In “The Starter,” Spence stages a comic tale of courtship written in an eye dialect that calls out for gifted actors to make stilted symbols into natural speech: “Y’know, kid, I bin thinkin’ — Say, why don’t we get married?

From New York Times

Cube’s group infamously used the colloquial eye dialect of the epithet in its name — and quite liberally throughout its lyrics — to incite the public while documenting the harsh realities of life in gang- and drug-plagued South-Central.

From Los Angeles Times