[ahy] 
pronoun, nominative I, possessive my or mine, objective me; plural nominative we, possessive our or ours, objective us; noun, plural I's.| 1. | the nominative singular pronoun, used by a speaker in referring to himself or herself. |
| 2. | (used to denote the narrator of a literary work written in the first person singular). |
| 3. | Metaphysics. the ego. |
, OCS azŭ, Lith aš, Skt ahám
| Is. abbr.
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| I·sa·iah 2 (ī-zā'ə, ī-zī'ə) n. Abbr. Isa. or Is. See Table at Bible. [After Isaiah.] |
| is·land (ī'lənd) n.
To make into or as if into an island; insulate: a secluded mansion, islanded by shrubbery and fences. [Alteration (influenced by isle) of Middle English ilond, from Old English īegland : īg, īeg; see akw-ā- in Indo-European roots + land, land; see lendh- in Indo-European roots.] Word History: It may seem hard to believe, but Latin aqua, "water," is related to island, which originally meant "watery land." Aqua comes almost unchanged from Indo-European *akwā-, "water." *Akwā- became *ahwō- in Germanic by Grimm's Law and other sound changes. To this was built the adjective *ahwjō-, "watery." This then evolved to *awwjō- or *auwi-, which in pre-English became *ēaj-, and finally ēg or īeg in Old English. Island, spelled iland, first appears in Old English in King Alfred's translation of Boethius about A.D. 888; the spellings igland and ealond appear in contemporary documents. The s in island is due to a mistaken etymology, confusing the etymologically correct English iland with French isle. Isle comes ultimately from Latin īnsula "island," a component of paenīnsula, "almost-island," whence our peninsula. |
"The reason for writing I is ... the orthographic habit in the middle ages of using a 'long i' (that is, j or I) whenever the letter was isolated or formed the last letter of a group; the numeral 'one' was written j or I (and three iij, etc.), just as much as the pronoun." [Otto Jespersen, "Growth and Structure of the English Language," p.233]The form ich or ik, especially before vowels, lingered in northern England until c.1400 and survived in southern dialects until 18c. The dot on the "small" letter -i- began to appear in 11c. L. manuscripts, to distinguish the letter from the stroke of another letter (such as -m- or -n-). Originally a diacritic, it was reduced to a dot with the introduction of Roman type fonts. The basic word for "I" in Japanese is watakushi, but it is not much used. Words that boys usually use are boku (polite) or ore (OH-ray), a rougher word, which can be rude depending on the situation. Girls usually use atashi (a feminine-sounding word) or the neutral watashi, but a tomboy might use boku like boys do.
i
I
The symbol for the element iodine.
iThe symbol for current.
| iodine (ī'ə-dīn') Pronunciation Key
Symbol I A shiny, grayish-black element of the halogen group. It is corrosive and poisonous and occurs in very small amounts in nature except for seaweed, in which it is abundant. Iodine compounds are used in medicine, antiseptics, and dyes. Atomic number 53; atomic weight 126.9045; melting point 113.5°C; boiling point 184.35°C; specific gravity (solid, at 20°C) 4.93; valence 1, 3, 5, 7. See Periodic Table. |
Is.
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