English
eye dialect
From eye + dialect, by analogy with eye rhyme.
Proto-Indo-European *h₃ekʷ- ‘eye’
Proto-Germanic *augô
Proto-West Germanic *augā
Old English ēage
Middle English e
English eye
Ancient Greek διαλέγομαι ‘to participate in a dialogue’
Ancient Greek διάλεκτος ‘conversation, the language of a country or a…’
Latin dialectos ‘a dialect (esp. Greek)’
Middle French dialecte
English dialect
The story
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.
Today it means
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.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / eye dialect