Eye-talian

• I-talian

Representing a deliberate mispronunciation of Italian.

• IPA^(key): /aɪˈtæljən/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æliən

Eye-talian (not comparable)

1. (chiefly US, slang, pronunciation spelling, derogatory) Italian, usually in reference to an Italian American person 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?"

   • 2011 July 1, Victoria Moore, “Francis Ford Coppola's second career as a winemaker”, in Tony Gallagher, editor, The Daily Telegraph‎^[1], London: Telegraph Media Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 4 July 2011:

     “All this eating and drinking is hard,” he says, all white beard and Eye-talian-American accent, as he pulls up a chair in the Japanese restaurant Zuma in Knightsbridge. / “How do you manage? If I drink at lunchtime I just get sleepy and… affectionate.”

Eye-talian (plural Eye-talians)

1. (chiefly US, slang, pronunciation spelling, derogatory) An Italian, usually an Italian American.
   • 1989 January 1, Mike Downey, “COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE BOWL GAMES : Country Road Leads Them to Big Time”, in Los Angeles Times‎^[2], Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 January 2026:

     “So, now our Mountaineers have to be playin’ all these Eye-talians?” asked Clyde.

   • 1989 August 16, Leah L. Simons, “No Judgments from Spike Lee”, in The Washington Post‎^[3], Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 January 2026:

     When Sal's "troublemaker," his three-times-daily, pizza-eating and paying customer, demanded that Sal "take down all those 'Eye-talians' on the wall and put up some black brothers," Sal callously replied, "Get your own place and do what you want."

   • 2003 November 30, Jody Alesandro, “COVER STORY; Laugh Lines Where You Most Expect Them”, in The New York Times‎^[4], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28 May 2015:

     More than 30 years ago Carroll O'Connor would sit in Archie Bunker's favorite chair and rant about "jungle bunnies" or "chinks" or, "you know, Edith, dem dere Eye-talians."