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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists: Cockney is a dialect of English.
  2. n. A variety of language that with other varieties constitutes a single language of which no single variety is standard: the dialects of Ancient Greek.
  3. n. The language peculiar to the members of a group, especially in an occupation; jargon: the dialect of science.
  4. n. The manner or style of expressing oneself in language or the arts.
  5. n. A language considered as part of a larger family of languages or a linguistic branch. Not in scientific use: Spanish and French are Romance dialects.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Language; speech; mode of speech; manner of speaking.
  2. n. One of a number of related modes of speech, regarded as descended from a common original; a language viewed in its relation to other languages of the same kindred; the idiom of a district or class, differing from that of other districts or classes. Thus, the Scotch is a dialect of English; English is a dialect of the Germanic or Teutonic group; Germanic speech is an Aryan or Indo-European dialect. Of the various dialects of Greek —Attic, Ionic, Doric, Æolic, and so on —the Attic finally became the common dialect of all cultivated Greeks. Every literary language is originally one of a body of related dialects, to which favoring circumstances have given vogue and general acceptance.
  3. n. The idiom of a locality or class, as distinguished from the generally accepted literary language, or speech of educated people.
  4. n. 4 Dialectic; logic.
  5. To make dialectal.

Wiktionary

  1. n. linguistics A variety of a language (specifically, often a spoken variety) that is characteristic of a particular area, community or group, often with relatively minor differences in vocabulary, style, spelling and pronunciation.
  2. n. A dialect of a language perceived as substandard and wrong.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Means or mode of expressing thoughts; language; tongue; form of speech.
  2. n. The form of speech of a limited region or people, as distinguished from ether forms nearly related to it; a variety or subdivision of a language; speech characterized by local peculiarities or specific circumstances

WordNet 3.0

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

Etymologies

  1. From Ancient Greek διάλεκτος (diálektos, "conversation, the language of a country or a place or a nation, the local idiom which derives from a dominant language"), from διαλέγομαι (dialégomai, "I participate in a dialogue"), from διά (diá, "inter, through") + λέγω (légō, "I speak"). (Wiktionary)
  2. French dialecte, from Old French, from Latin dialectus, form of speech, from Greek dialektos, speech, from dialegesthai, to discourse, use a dialect : dia-, between, over; see dia- + legesthai, middle voice of legein, to speak; see leg- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

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‘dialect’ has been looked up 4169 times, loved by 2 people, added to 21 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 10.