Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
noun
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.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: uncountable
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A set of such nonstandard spellings, collectively used to reflect a certain form of speech.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: countable
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
the use of misspellings to identify a colloquial or uneducated speaker
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: dialect, idiom, accent
History
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.
Across languages
12 source translations are retained for this English entry.
