Moi
/mwɑː/noun
An informal or humorous English borrowing from French meaning “me” or “myself.”
Did you know?In French, moi is a stressed pronoun used for emphasis—roughly “me, personally”—which is why English adopted it as a playful marker of self-dramatization.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*me
“Me; the speaker as the object of an action”
Proto-Italic
Proto-Italic
*mē
“Me; an emphasized object pronoun”
Classical Latin
Latin
mē
“Me; myself”
Old French
Old French
moi
“Me; myself, especially in an emphasized position”
16th Century
French
moi
“The stressed first-person pronoun used for contrast or emphasis”
20th Century
English
moi
“A humorous or affected English expression for “me” or “myself””