Your

How to spell your

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce your

What does your mean?

1. determinerBelonging to or associated with the person or people being addressed.

Your in a sentence

• Is this your coat on the hook?

• Don't forget your umbrella.

• What's your favourite colour?

• Please pass me your plate.

• Your help is greatly appreciated.

Where does your come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English eower, the genitive (possessive) form of ge, the plural pronoun for 'you'. That ancient possessive simply meant 'belonging to you', and it shares its deep roots with the Germanic family of pronouns seen in Dutch uw and German euer. Over the centuries the spelling was smoothed and shortened into the modern 'your', losing the older 'eo' vowel cluster along the way. The chief spelling trap is not within the word itself but in its homophones: 'you're' (the contraction of 'you are') and the casual 'yore' (long ago), all of which sound identical in everyday speech. Keeping 'your' as the possessor, with no apostrophe, is the reliable cue, since the apostrophe in 'you're' stands in for the missing letter of 'are'.

How the word is built

• Possessive pronoun.

Words that sound like your

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• you're: A contraction of 'you are', combining the pronoun with the verb.