Eye-talian

English

Alternative forms

• I-talian

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Adjective

Eye-talian (not comparable)

1. (chiefly US, slang, pronunciation spelling, derogatory) Italian, usually in reference to an Italian American or Italian American culture.
   • 1848, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Judge Haliburton's Yankee Stories, page 175:

     No, sir, lose your colonies, and you'd have Eye-talian cities without their climate, Eye-talian lazaroni without their light hearts to sing over their poverty, (for the English can't sing a bit better nor bull frogs,) and worse than Eye-talian eruptions and volcanoes in politics, without the grandeur and sublimity of those in natur'.

   • 1918, Sidney McCall, Mary McNeil Fenollosa, Sunshine Beggars, page 94:

     "She is brown as a chipmunk, and her eyes is as big and lovin' as them of the little Eye-talian girl you've been talkin' about." "It-talian, not Eye-talian, Phil corrected […]."

   • 1995, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, page 642:

     “Hey, Pensiero, ya know whut a Eye-talian submarine sounds like, on dat new sonar?"

Usage notes

The spelling represents a pronunciation of Italian with /aɪ/ rather than /ɪ/ or /ə/.