eye dialect

noun

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.”

Compare pronunciation spelling.

Origin of eye dialect

First recorded in 1920–25

Usage note

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

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018