High Tider

High Tider, Hoi Toider, or High Tide English is an American English dialect, or family of dialects, spoken in very limited communities of the South Atlantic United States, particularly several small islands and coastal townships. The exact areas include the rural "Down East" region of North Carolina, which encompasses the Outer Banks and Pamlico Sound—specifically Atlantic, Davis, Sea Level, and Harkers Island in eastern Carteret County, the village of Wanchese, and also Ocracoke—plus the Chesapeake Bay, such as Smith Island in Maryland, as well as Guinea Neck and Tangier Island in Virginia. High Tider has been observed as far west as Bertie County, North Carolina; the term is also a local nickname for any native resident of these regions.

The dialect does not have a name that is uniformly used in the academic literature, but it is referenced by a variety of names, including Hoi Toider (or, more restrictively based on region, Down East, Chesapeake Bay, or Outer Banks) English, dialect, brogue, or accent. The Atlas of North American English does not consider Hoi Toider dialect to be a subset of Southern U.S. dialect since it does not participate in the first stage of the Southern Vowel Shift, but it shares commonalities as a full member of the larger Southeastern super-dialect region (in fronting the /oʊ/ and /aʊ/ vowels, exhibiting the pin–pen merger, resisting the cot–caught merger, and being strongly rhotic).

Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1997) provide the most detailed study of this variety in North Carolina.