Selfe

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. An old spelling of the word meaning a person's own individual being, used in early English writing such as Spenser's poetry
2. Archaic form denoting one's own person or identity, the same sense that the modern word expresses in everyday English
3. A obsolete variant spelling referring to the individual's own being, found in older English texts and verse

Etymology: The word "self" has deep roots in Germanic languages, and its ancestry is shared with a surprising range of modern words. It descends from Proto-Germanic "selbaz", which is traced back to a Proto-Indo-European root "selbʰ-", meaning "one's own." That root gave English a word for identity and emphasis, and its cousins are found across the Germanic family: German "selbst" ("by oneself"), Dutch "zelf", Danish and Swedish "selv" and "själv", and Icelandic "sjálfur". Even the ancient Gothic had "silba", meaning "self," showing how old this word is. In Old English the word appeared as "self", "seolf", and "sylf", and it was used both as an adjective and a noun. Over the Middle English period it took forms such as "salve", "self", and "silf" before settling into the spelling we know today. The spelling "selfe" is simply an older form from the early modern period, when final "e" was commonly added to words, and it fell out of use as spelling standardised.