Word.ws English Dictionary

eye-words

eye-words is the plural of eye-word.

Meaning of eye-word

Noun

eye-word (plural eye-words)

  1. 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

Questions about eye-words

What is eye-words the plural of?
Eye-words is the plural of eye-word.

Words near eye-words in the dictionary

  1. eye-winker
  2. eye-winkers
  3. eye-witness
  4. eye-witnesses
  5. eye-word
  6. eye-words
  7. eye-worthy
  8. eyeable
  9. eyeache
  10. eyeaches
  11. eyebag

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eye-words (page history and authors); 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-words.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eye-words. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.