Date: Wed Aug 15 00:01:28 EDT 2001
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--eye dialect

eye dialect (eye-DY-uh-lekt) noun

Unusual or nonstandard spelling to represent an uneducated or youthful speaker or to convey dialectal or colloquial speech.
Examples: wuz for was, wimmin (women), enuff (enough), warez (wares), peepul (people), Strine (Australian).

[First used in print by George Phillip Krapp (1872-1934) in The English Language in America to denote spellings in which "the convention violated is one of the eyes, not of the ear."]