own, my

   ‘What delight the words gave her,’ says Charlotte Yonge of her heroine, in The Heir of Redclyffe, when she is addressed by the man she loves as ‘my own’.

   ‘Own’ has long been used as an element in affectionate terms of address, emphasizing the feeling of possessiveness that lovers adopt towards their partners, or simply the tender feelings of the speaker. ‘Tell me, mine own,’ says Hermione to her daughter, in The Winter’s Tale (5:iii) ‘where has thou been preserv’d?’

   In Tennyson’s Maud occurs the rather excessive: ‘My own heart’s heart and ownest own, farewell.’ Oscar Wilde may well have been laughing at such excess in The Import ance of Being Earnest, where Jack Worthing is fond of calling Gwendolen ‘my own darling’, ‘my own one’.

   No doubt such endearments are still whispered in appropriate circumstances, but they would sound strange if overheard. Even in private a modern miss so addressed might protest that she is her own woman, not someone else’s.