English

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Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /əm/, /m̩/ or, next to a vowel, sometimes /m/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Etymology 1

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Contraction of am.

Verb

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’m (clitic)

  1. Am, used especially in I'm.
    • 2008, Elizabeth George, Playing for the Ashes, Bantam, →ISBN, page 158:
      “So how'm I not good?”
  2. (dialect) Various forms of be.
    • 1874, Frances Mary Peard, Thorpe Regis:
      You'm no better than a baby when they've clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from beginnin' to end.
    • 1962, John Le Carre, A Murder of Quality:
      "He'm a bad one. Ooh, he'm a bad one, Mister," and she laughed softly. "I seed 'im flying, riding on the wind," she laughed again, "and the moon be'ind 'im, lightin' up the way. They'm close as sisters, moon and Devil."
    • 2016, Alan Moore, Jerusalem, Liveright, page 180:
      “Ah, it's a wonder we’m got two sticks to us name, with all that plunder what youm 'ad already.”
See also
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Etymology 2

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Pronoun

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'm

  1. Alternative form of 'em
    • 1967-1969, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
      I picked up two stones and threw ’m in the air, heard ’m drop

Etymology 3

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Contraction of madam/ma'am.

Noun

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’m

  1. Represents the word madam or ma'am when used as a formal address of a female; as in yes'm and no'm.

Bavarian

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Etymology

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Merged unstressed form of am and em or dem.

Article

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'm m or n

  1. a (dative)
  2. the (dative)

See also

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Catalan

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Pronoun

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'm

  1. Contraction of me.

Usage notes

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  • 'm is the reduced (reduïda) form of the pronoun. It is used after verbs ending with a vowel.
    Truca'm.Call me.

Declension

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Cornish

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Determiner

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'm

  1. my

Pronoun

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'm

  1. me

Dutch

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Pronunciation

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Pronoun

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'm

  1. Contraction of hem.
    Hij heeft 'm neergeschoten.
    He shot him.

Declension

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North Frisian

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Pronoun

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'm (Föhr-Amrum, Mooring)

  1. Reduced form of jam (you, you all, subject)

Usage notes

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  • Note that jam is both subject and object case, but the reduced form 'm occurs only for the subject.
  • On Föhr and Amrum, 'm is added to an imperative to make it plural, e.g. kom (come!, singular), kom'm (come!, plural). This usage is not common in Mooring, the simple form being used for both numbers (as in English).

See also

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Welsh

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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Determiner

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'm

  1. (literary) my (triggers h-prothesis of a following vowel)
    Synonym: fy
    Rwy'n myned yn ôl adref i’m hannwyl famwlad.
    I am going back home to my dear homeland.

Pronoun

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'm

  1. (literary) me (used after vowels as the direct object of a verb; triggers h-prothesis of a following vowel)
    Synonyms: fi, i
    Dywed na’m hadwaenai.
    He/She says that he/she would not recognise me.
    Fe’m ganed i deulu di-Gymraeg.
    I was born (lit. "One gave birth to me") into a non-Welsh-speaking family.
Usage notes
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  • The determiner can be considered a "contraction" of fy used after mostly functional vowel-final words.
  • The pronoun occurs after certain vowel-final preverbal particles, such as fe, a, ni, na, oni and pe.

Etymology 2

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Particle

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'm

  1. (colloquial) Contraction of ddim (not).
    Dwyt ti’m yn cofio Macsen.
    You don’t remember Macsen.

Further reading

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  • R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke et al., editors (1950–present), “'m”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
  NODES
eth 3
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