yours

Yours is a second-person possessive pronoun in modern English. It refers to something that belongs to the person or people being addressed and functions as a stand-alone pronoun rather than a determiner. When describing ownership before a noun, English normally uses the determiner your (as in your book). The form yours is used when the noun is not stated or when ownership is asserted without naming the object, as in “Is this yours?” or “The decision is yours.”

Yours often appears in letter closings, in phrases such as “Yours sincerely” or “Yours truly.” These are conventional formulas, not literal possessives, but they reflect the same underlying ownership relation to the addressee.

Origin and form: “Yours” developed from the pronoun you with the possessive suffix -s and has been part of English since the Middle English period. It functions as a nominal pronoun, whereas “your” remains the possessive determiner before a noun. Colloquial nonstandard variants such as “your’n” appear in some dialects.

Notes: In standard modern English, yours is used for both singular and plural addressees. It should appear without an accompanying noun, in contrast to your, which modifies a noun.

See also: Your, Yourself, Yours truly, Possessive pronouns, English pronouns.