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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
patois
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a patois of the Louisiana backwoods
▪ the patois of lawyers
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And then, protected against the pitfalls of this curious patois, you can book your ticket to Tokyo in complete confidence.
▪ Both neighborhoods had a strong spiritual sense, a different musical culture, unique foods, and unappreciated patois.
▪ His comprehension of the patois was total.
▪ Its leaders and managers refuse to speak a polyglot language derived from the patois of lawyers, accountants, and pop psychologists.
▪ The Latin words died, replaced by ones in patois.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Patois

Patois \Pa`tois"\ (p[.a]`tw[aum]"), n. [F.] A dialect peculiar to the illiterate classes; a provincial form of speech.

The jargon and patois of several provinces.
--Sir T. Browne.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
patois

"a provincial dialect," 1640s, from French patois "native or local speech" (13c.), of uncertain origin, probably from Old French patoier "handle clumsily, to paw," from pate "a paw," from Vulgar Latin *patta (see patten), from notion of clumsy manner of speaking. Compare French pataud "properly, a young dog with big paws, then an awkwardly built fellow" [Brachet]. Especially in reference to Jamaican English from 1934.

Wiktionary
patois

n. 1 A regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard. 2 Any of various French or Occitan dialects spoken in France. 3 Creole French in the Caribbean (especially in Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti). 4 A Jamaican Creole language primarily based on English and African languages but also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. 5 Jargon or cant.

WordNet
patois
  1. n. a characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves); "they don't speak our lingo" [syn: cant, jargon, slang, lingo, argot, vernacular]

  2. a regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard

Wikipedia
Patois

Patois (, pl. same or ) is speech or language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. As such, patois can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, or vernaculars, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant.

Class distinctions are implied in the term, as patois in French refers to a sociolect associated with uneducated rural classes and is contrasted with the dominant prestige language as used in literature and formal settings (the " acrolect").

Usage examples of "patois".

His ungrammatical French was the fluidly sloppy get-along speech of an Anglophone who has made his home among French-speakers for a few months, not the half-African patois of the slave quarters.

Chimpanion manifested as a male, speaking a pidgin patois of English and French, in a belch-riven bonobo accent.

Genoese conjugates his patois verbs, with subjunctives and all things of that handsome kind, lacked by the English of Universities.

Creole French that she always used in her ceremonies, rather than the anglicized patois of his followers.

Goldoni and Gallina and Signor Fogazzaro have written in the patois of the Veneto, use no dialect at all.

He was a true Jerseyman at heart, and speaking to such as Dormy Jamais he used the homely patois phrases.

I was very young, my mother put me to bed with these stories, told in the harsh, old-fashioned French patois of her aunts, a sound that I associated with the stern-voiced chants of the Onondagan storytellers who used similar cautionary tales when they sought to persuade recalcitrant rebels to bend their will to that of the Confederacy.

The Ranz des Vaches of Vaud is in the patois of the country, a dialect that is composed of words of Greek and Latin origin, mingled on a foundation of Celtic.

A few more quick orders in the local patois -- a corrupt version of Spanglish -- and the doctor found himself disarmed.

At the end of the dialogue, which was carried on in the patois of Forli, the witch having received a silver ducat from my grandmother, opened a box, took me in her arms, placed me in the box and locked me in it, telling me not to be frightened--a piece of advice which would certainly have had the contrary effect, if I had had any wits about me, but I was stupefied.

He tried to charm them with his expertise on the videogames, but they preferred to murmur to one another in English patois or sit huddled and shivering in the air conditioning.

I was learning the island patois, quickly adjusting my knowledge as I came across the different argots that were used from one island to the next.

Muttering in the Canuck patois of northern New England, he pulled his little audiospectrograph from its waterproof pouch with fingers that trembled from ex­citement and hit the record pad.

Brown had no idea whether this was pure French or bastardized French or even the patois some of them spoke, which not even a Parisian could understand.

So, mah boys tell me we got us the Dancer hisself, the agent muttered, the patois less Ebonics than, well.