Ionic dialect (Gr. Gram.), a dialect of the Greek language, used in Ionia. The Homeric poems are written in what is designated old Ionic, as distinguished from new Ionic, or Attic, the dialect of all cultivated Greeks in the period of Athenian prosperity and glory. -- Ionic foot. (Pros.) See Ionic, n., 1. -- Ionic, or Ionian, mode (Mus.), an ancient mode, supposed to correspond with the modern major scale of C. -- Ionic sect, a sect of philosophers founded by Thales of Miletus, in Ionia. Their distinguishing tenet was, that water is the original principle of all things. -- Ionic type, a kind of heavy- faced type (as that of the following line).

*This is Nonpareil Ionic.