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