Eye-talian

alternative I-talian

1. USderogatorynot comparablepronunciation spellingslangItalian, usually in reference to an Italian American person or Italian American culture.

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

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

   3 more examples

   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'.

   1848, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Judge Haliburton's Yankee Stories, page 175

   "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 […]."

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

   “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.”

   2011 July 1, Victoria Moore, “Francis Ford Coppola's second career as a winemaker”, in Tony Gallagher, editor, The Daily Telegraph, London: Telegraph Media Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Jul 2011

plural Eye-talians · alternative I-talian

1. USderogatorypronunciation spellingslangAn Italian, usually an Italian American.

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

   1989 January 1, Mike Downey, “COLLEGE FOOTBALL: THE BOWL GAMES : Country Road Leads Them to Big Time”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2026

   2 more examples

   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."

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

   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."

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