Me

Part of speech: pronoun

Definitions

1. The objective form of the first-person pronoun, used for the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition ; the third note of the major scale in solfège, sung as a syllable
2. A first-person pronoun in the object case, referring to the speaker when receiving an action ; the syllable for the third degree of a diatonic scale in solmization
3. Used by a speaker to refer to themselves as the recipient of action ; in solfège, the name sung for the third tone of a major scale

Etymology: The pronoun "me" is one of the oldest words in English, and its ancestry runs back to a prehistoric root meaning simply "me" that also gave Latin "me" and Sanskrit "mā". Old English "mē" was originally the dative form, the "to me" or "for me" case, and only later took over the accusative role, pushing aside the older accusative "mec". The word's sound has shifted over the centuries: in Middle English it was pronounced roughly like modern "may", and the Great Vowel Shift turned that long vowel into the "ee" we now hear, though some dialects kept the older sound. Most of the word's history, though, is a matter of sound rather than meaning. Its pronunciation was once close to "may", and its spelling still reflects a sound that has since moved on. Stop here.