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.”

Origin of eye dialect

First recorded in 1920–25

usage note for eye dialect

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