Yours

How to spell yours

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce yours

What does yours mean?

1. pronounBelonging to or associated with you; the thing or things that belong to you.

Yours in a sentence

• The umbrella by the door is yours, not mine.

• I finished my report early, so the meeting room is yours for the afternoon.

Where does yours come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Yours descends from Old English eower, the possessive form linked to ge, meaning 'you' in the plural. By Middle English this had become 'your', and writers began adding an -s to create an absolute possessive that could stand alone without a following noun, giving us 'yours' alongside the parallel forms 'hers', 'ours' and 'theirs'. Crucially, this final -s was never a contraction or a possessive apostrophe construction; it is simply the old genitive ending fused onto the word. That history is the whole reason the modern spelling takes no apostrophe, even though the meaning is possessive and tempts writers toward 'your's'. The same pattern across hers, ours and theirs is a useful memory anchor: none of them carries an apostrophe either.

How the word is built

• your (possessive of 'you')
• -s (possessive pronoun ending, no apostrophe)