| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| me |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  m |
| PRONOUN: | The objective case of I11. Used as the direct object of a verb: He assisted me. 2. Used as the indirect object of a verb: They offered me a ride. 3. Used as the object of a preposition: This letter is addressed to me. 4. Informal Used as a predicate nominative: It's me. See Usage Notes at be, but, I1. 5. Nonstandard Used reflexively as the indirect object of a verb: I bought me a new car. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English, from Old English m. See me-1 in Appendix I. | | OUR LIVING LANGUAGE: | Speakers of vernacular varieties of English, especially in the South, will commonly utter sentences like I bought me some new clothes or She got her a good job, in which the objective form of the pronoun (me, her) rather than the reflexive pronoun (myself, herself) is used to refer back to the subject of the sentence (I, her). However, the reflexive pronoun of Standard English cannot always be replaced by the vernacular objective pronoun. For example, Jane baked her and John some cookies doesn't mean “Jane baked herself and John some cookies.” In this sentence, her must refer to someone other than Jane, just as it does in Standard English. In addition, forms like me and her cannot be used in place of myself or herself unless the noun in the phrase following the pronoun is preceded by a modifier such as some, a, or a bunch of. Thus, sentences such as I cooked me some dinner and We bought us a bunch of candy are commonplace; sentences such as I cooked me dinner and We bought us candy do not occur at all. Sometimes objective pronouns can occur where reflexive pronouns cannot. For example, some Southerners might say I'm gonna write me a letter to the President; nobody, no matter what variety he or she speaks, would say I'm gonna write myself a letter to the President.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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