Mysel

Part of speech: pronoun

Definitions

1. A Scots and northern English dialect form of the reflexive pronoun meaning me or my own person
2. Dialect pronoun used in parts of Scotland and northern England to refer to the speaker as the one doing or experiencing something
3. A regional variant of the first-person reflexive pronoun used to emphasize or refer back to the speaker

Etymology: "Mysel" is a Scots form of "myself," and it is a good example of how dialects can keep a word's shape while trimming its ending. The English pronoun comes from Old English "min self," where "self" was an adjective meaning "same" or "very," as in the surviving phrase "self-same." Over time it became an intensifier and a reflexive ending, so "my self" came to mean "me, the very person." Readers may recognize the same process in "himself" and "yourself." In Scots and some northern English speech, the final "f" was dropped, leaving "mysel." The "y" stays because the stressed vowel survived in most dialect forms. Scots writers used it in dialogue and verse to suggest everyday speech, and it still appears in modern Scots writing.