DIALECT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does dialect mean? 

• DIALECT (noun)
  The noun DIALECT has 1 sense:

1. the usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people

  Familiarity information: DIALECT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DIALECT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific group of people

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

accent; dialect; idiom

Context example:

it has been said that a language is a dialect with an army and navy

Hypernyms ("dialect" is a kind of...):

non-standard speech (speech that differs from the usual accepted, easily recognizable speech of native adult members of a speech community)

Domain member usage:

bang; spang (leap, jerk, bang)

euphonious ((of speech or dialect) pleasing in sound; not harsh or strident)

forrad; forrard; forward; forwards; frontward; frontwards (at or to or toward the front)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "dialect"):

eye dialect (the use of misspellings to identify a colloquial or uneducated speaker)

patois (a regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard)

Derivation:

dialectal (belonging to or characteristic of a dialect)

 Context examples 

I knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“Hold it safe, father,” the other answered, in the same soft, mincing dialect.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“You can laugh if you vill, masters,” he cried, in his Lewkner Lane dialect, holding up his two thin, vein-covered hands.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Geminga’s name is both a play on the phrase Gemini gamma-ray source and the expression it’s not there — referring to astronomers’ inability to find the object at other energies — in the dialect of Milan, Italy.

(NASA’s Fermi Mission Links Nearby Pulsar’s Gamma-ray ‘Halo’ to Antimatter Puzzle, NASA)

But I have since found that the sea Yahoos are apt, like the land ones, to become new-fangled in their words, which the latter change every year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand the new.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

“Have the brethren come?” he asked, in the Anglo-French dialect used in religious houses.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Theerfur 'tan't my intentions to moor Missis Gummidge 'long with them, but to find a Beein' fur her wheer she can fisherate for herself. (A Beein' signifies, in that dialect, a home, and to fisherate is to provide.) Fur which purpose, said Mr. Peggotty, I means to make her a 'lowance afore I go, as'll leave her pretty comfort'ble.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The horse neighed three or four times, and I waited to hear some answers in a human voice, but I heard no other returns than in the same dialect, only one or two a little shriller than his.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)