mi

Forms

mi sg (first-person singular possessive singular, plural mis)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell it mi, mj and my, with a feminine mie and the plural mis.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin meus (“my, mine”), in a form reduced when it stood unstressed before a noun; the full form is mío.^[1][3][4] Gómez de Silva explains that Old Spanish mi served both genders: the feminine is míe, from mea, which lost its second syllable before a noun, and the masculine mío lost its second syllable in the same way, on the model of the feminine.^[5] In the Cantar de mio Cid the short form is still feminine, and Menéndez Pidal holds that the places where it stands before a masculine noun need correcting; the masculine there is the full form, as in the poem's title.^[6][7]

Other Romance languages have unstressed possessives of the same origin beside the stressed ones, such as Catalan mon, Catalan ma, French mon and French ma.^[8][9] The Latin word continues *meos;^[1] the OLD analyses it as the stem of ego (“I”) with the adjective ending.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, known from a 14th-century copy) uses mi as the possessive of the first person before feminine nouns.^[6][7] The first record in a text without a later copy is the Cortes de Benavente of 1202: en una con mi muger la Reyna doña Beringuela, é con mi fijo don Fernando “together with my wife Queen Berenguela and with my son Don Fernando”, where mi already goes with a masculine noun too.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In the 13th century the masculine mio was still used before nouns, as in Alfonso X's prose (por mio entendimiento “by my understanding”, c. 1254), before mi took over for both genders.^[11][5] Nebrija's Vocabulario of 1513 glosses mi with Latin meus, and the Diccionario de Autoridades describes it as an adjective equal to mío.^[12][13] Salvá (1846) defines it as the form used before a noun in place of mío, mía, which are used after it.^[14]

Today it is proclitic in most of Spain and the Americas, but Moliner notes that it is pronounced stressed in some regions, for example around Valladolid.^[15] The Academy also records an affective use before a first name, and the military use before a rank in addressing a superior (mi coronel).^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid has mi before feminine nouns and mio before masculine ones.^[6]
• 1182 – the plural mis appears in a document of the monastery of Fitero.^[2]
• 1201 – the earliest occurrence in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.^[16]
• 1202 – the Cortes de Benavente use mi muger and mi fijo.^[7]
• c. 1254 – Alfonso X's prose still writes mio before a noun.^[11]
• 1513 – Nebrija's Vocabulario glosses mi with Latin meus.^[12]
• 1591 – Percyvall gives mi beside mia, mio as “mine”.^[17]
• 1917 – Alemany defines mi, mis as the apocope of mío, mía, míos, mías, used only before the noun.^[18]

Meanings

Determiner

1. my: the possessive of the first person singular, used before the noun: Mi hermana vive en Lima.^[3][1]
2. (colloquial) Before a first name, it adds affection or emphasis: Mi Carmen siempre llega tarde.^[3]
3. (military) Before a rank, a respectful form of address to a superior: Sí, mi capitán.^[3]

Related words

• mío
• tu
• su
• Latin meus

Usage notes

The plural mis marks several things possessed, not several possessors.^[19] Mi has no accent; the stressed pronoun mí (para mí) comes from Latin mihi.^[20] The same spelling is also the name of the third note of the musical scale, the syllable mi of mira gestorum in the hymn Ut queant laxis of Paul the Deacon, used in the notation ascribed to Guido of Arezzo and found in Spanish from the early 15th century,^[21][3] and the name of the Greek letter μ, from Greek μῦ.^[3][22]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. mi
3. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. mi
4. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mío
5. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. mi
6. ^ a b c Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. mi
7. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. mi
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. mi
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. mi
12. ^ a b Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 380
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 567
14. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 716
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. mi
16. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. mi
17. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. s.v. mi
18. ^ Alemany y Bolufer, José (1917), Diccionario de la lengua española, Barcelona: Ramón Sopena, p. 1135
19. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. mi
20. ^ Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. yo
21. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. mi
22. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill