Am

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The first-person singular present form of the verb to be ; an abbreviation for ante meridiem, meaning the hours between midnight and noon
2. The form of the verb to be used with I to describe a present state ; a label placed after clock times to mark a time before midday
3. Used with the pronoun I to link a subject to its current condition ; a Latin abbreviation attached to times that fall before noon

Etymology: "Am" is the first-person singular present form of "be," and its ancestry runs back to a verb that originally meant something like "to dwell" or "to live." The Old English forms were "eom," which descended from a Proto-Germanic form, ""izmi," built on the Germanic verb ""wesaną," meaning "to be; dwell." Old Norse "em" and Gothic "im" show the same form, so the sound is shared across the old Germanic languages. The word also has a distant relative in ancient Greek. "Eimi," meaning "I am," is cognate with "am" and with Old Armenian "em," as well as Albanian "jam." These parallels come from the Indo-European family, so the first-person "I am" has been carried by the same root across many languages for thousands of years.