Etymology:

Examples and Observations:

• "[T]he term dialect is sometimes used only if there is a strong tradition of writing in the local variety. Old English and to a lesser extent Middle English had dialects in this sense. In the absence of such a tradition of writing the term patois may be used to describe the variety. However, many linguists writing in English tend to use dialect to describe both situations and rarely, if at all, use patois as a scientific term. You are likely to encounter it only as a kind of anachronism, as in its use by Jamaicans, who often refer to the variety of English spoken on the island as a 'patois.'"
  (Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 4th ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002)

• "[Benjamin] Zephaniah took a general approach to his topic, pondering 'who decides what is slang and what is not,' but he also focused on the rise of Jamaican patois as the current slang of choice for young people. Slang has long irked those excluded by it, but the programme suggested that concerns about slang now are driven by the fact that 'what is perceived to be black slang is being spoken by white and middle-class children.'"
  (Elisabeth Mahoney, "Mind Your Slanguage." The Guardian, Dec. 9, 2009)
• "Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive."
  (Raymond Chandler, letter to Edward Weeks, Jan. 18, 1947. Quoted by F. MacShane in Life of Raymond Chandler, 1976)