dialect

noun, often attributive di·a·lect \ ˈdī-ə-ˌlekt \

|Updated on: 15 Jun 2018

Editor's Note: Dialectic: Logic through Conversation

Definition of dialect

1 linguistics

a : a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language

the Doric dialect of ancient Greek

a dialect of Chinese spoken in Hong Kong

b : one of two or more cognate (see ¹cognate 3a) languages

French and Italian are Romance dialects

c : a variety of a language used by the members of a group

such dialects as politics and advertising
—Philip Howard

d : a variety of language whose identity is fixed by a factor other than geography (such as social class)

spoke a rough peasant dialect

e : register 4c

f : a version of a computer programming language

2 : manner or means of expressing oneself : phraseology

—

dialectal

play \ˌdī-ə-ˈlek-tᵊl\ adjective

—

dialectally

play \-tə-lē\ adverb

See dialect defined for English-language learners

See dialect defined for kids

Examples of dialect in a Sentence

They speak a southern dialect of French.
The author uses dialect in his writing.
The play was hard to understand when the characters spoke in dialect.

Recent Examples of dialect from the Web

Director Yann Demange says McConaughey had to immerse himself into the role, working with a dialect coach to master the Detroit accent and dispensing with his normal McConaughey glow.

— bryan alexander, USA TODAY, "See Matthew McConaughey fail tragically as a dad in exclusive 'White Boy Rick' trailer," 4 June 2018
Additionally, external elements like language and dialect can create biases in interpreting sound that change the perceptions in different people.

— kalhan rosenblatt /, NBC News, "Yanny or Laurel? Science explains why you're hearing one and not the other," 16 May 2018
Amazon currently has a number of different voices with different dialects and accents developers can currently bundle into their skills, according to the company’s website.

— jonathan vanian, Fortune, "Amazon Alexa Coders Can Now Use 8 Different Voices in Their Skills," 16 May 2018
The study ingeniously recruited 670,000 online test-takers by framing the exercise as a quiz that would guess the participants’ native language or dialect.

— The Economist, "To master a language, start learning it early," 10 May 2018
Flipkart can offer Walmart homegrown advantages that Amazon doesn’t have, such as the option to do business in local dialects, and the ability to perform cash transactions, which Indian customers are more comfortable with.

— maya kosoff, The Hive, "Did Jeff Bezos Just Lose Asia?," 4 May 2018
In this full-page feature, Lewis encouraged literacy and imagination, reinforced the social order with black dialect stories and caricatures, and promoted the study of North Carolina history.

— Longreads, "Nell Battle Lewis, Storyteller for Jim Crow," 25 May 2018
For all of the great words that have recently entered the American dialect (hello, emoji!), the debate rages on for plenty of other common terms.

— caroline picard, Good Housekeeping, "Let's Settle It Once and for All: What Are These 10 Things Actually Called?," 24 May 2018
The boy had also forgotten his native language, the Kurdish dialect of Kurmani, and could speak only Turkmen and Turkish.

— hollie mckay, Fox News, "Yazidis seek rescue of women and children enslaved, married off to ISIS," 10 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dialect.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Dialectic: Logic through Conversation

Dialectic is a term used in philosophy, and the fact that it is closely connected to the ideas of Socrates and Plato is completely logical—even from an etymological point of view. Plato’s famous dialogues frequently presented Socrates playing a leading role, and dialogue comes from the Greek roots dia- (“through” or “across”) and -logue (“discourse” or “talk”). Dialect and dialectic come from dialecktos (“conversation” or “dialect”) and ultimately back to the Greek word dialegesthai, meaning “to converse.”

Conversation or dialogue was indeed at the heart of the “Socratic method,” through which Socrates would ask probing questions which cumulatively revealed his students’ unsupported assumptions and misconceptions. The goal, according to the definition in our Unabridged Dictionary, was to “elicit a clear and consistent expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings.”

Other philosophers had specific uses of the term dialectic, including Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism. Asking a series of questions was considered by Socrates a method of “giving birth” to the truth, and a related word, maieutic, defined as “relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another,” comes from the Greek word meaning “of midwifery.”