Your. pronoun. [oƿꞃ, Saxon.]
- Belonging to you. It is used properly when we speak to more than one, and ceremoniously and customarily when to only one.
Either your unparagoned mistress is dead, or she's outprized by a trifle. Shakespeare.
- Your is used in an indeteriminate sense.
Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough. If it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough; so every true man's apparel fits your thief. Shakespeare.
There is a great affinity between coins and poetry, and your medallist and critick are much nearer related than the world imagine. Addison on ancient Medals.
A disagreement between these seldom happens, but among your antiquaries and schoolmen. Felton on the Classicks.
- Yours is used when the substantive goes before or is understood; as this is your book, this is yours.
Pray for this man and for his issue,
Whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave,
And beggar'd yours for ever. Shakespeare's Macbeth.That done, our day of marriage shall be yours,
One feast, one house, one mutual happiness. Shakespeare.This kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air:
Conceive and fare the well. —
— Yours in the ranks of death. —— Shakespeare's King Lear.He is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours
Behold another daybreak in the east. Shakespeare.While the sword this monarchy secures,
'Tis manag'd by an abler hand than yours. Dryden.My wealth, my city and myself are yours. Dryden.
It is my employment to revive the old of past ages to the present, and it is yours to transmit the young of the present to the future. Pope.