Am
verbThe first person singular present form of the verb 'to be', used with 'I'.
How to spell am
2 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce am
What does am mean?
- verbThe first person singular present form of the verb 'to be', used with 'I'.
Am in a sentence
-
I am ready to leave for the airport now.
-
I am grateful for all the help you gave me last week.
Where does am come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This tiny word is one of the oldest in English, descending unchanged in function from the Old English 'eom', the first person singular of the verb 'beon', meaning 'to be'. It traces back through Proto-Germanic to the Proto-Indo-European root 'es-', meaning 'to be', the same ancient root that gave Latin 'sum' and 'est' and Greek 'esti'. Because the verb 'to be' is so heavily used, its forms were never smoothed into a regular pattern, which is why 'am', 'is', and 'are' look nothing like one another. The 'm' ending preserves a worn-down trace of the original Indo-European first-person marker. It has stayed a short, stable two-letter word for well over a thousand years, almost never causing spelling trouble.
How the word is built
- am (first person singular present of the verb 'be'; an irreducible single morpheme)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.