eye-word
eye-word noun: a word encountered more often in writing than in speech, and thus liable to be pronounced incorrectly.
Noun
eye-word (plural eye-words)
- A word encountered more often in writing than in speech, and thus liable to be pronounced incorrectly.
- We may hesitate whether "churl" is to be pronounced with a k or with a soft ch sound, because we do not use the word commonly in speech and hence it is becoming more of an eye-word than an ear-word.1908, Edward Kirby Putnam, Spelling Reform and Authority in Language: A Paper Read Before the Contemporary Club, Davenport, Iowa, December 26, 1907, page 7
Forms of eye-word
| plural | eye-words |
|---|
Questions about eye-word
- What does eye-word mean?
- Eye-word means a word encountered more often in writing than in speech, and thus liable to be pronounced incorrectly.
- What part of speech is eye-word?
- Eye-word is a noun.
- What is the plural of eye-word?
- The plural of eye-word is eye-words.
Words near eye-word in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: eye-word (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “eye-word.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eye-word. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.