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your
Example Sentences
He brought such a sign to the meeting, and it said, “NOT A TRAIL! For your safety, and to protect the habitat, please stay on designated trails.”
“As you’re going through the curriculum, you’re hearing stories that might be related to your uncle, your aunt, your mom, your dad, your grandpa,” she said through happy tears.
"Background pieces and in-depth reporting should build upon the citizens agenda. Decisions to make about where to put your resources? Consult the citizens agenda, a set of instructions for the design of campaign coverage in all its forms."
“IFS helps you not only start to pay attention to them, but also become the active internal leader that your system of parts needs.”
“Your goal is to unburden those parts, and once those parts are unburdened, what’s left is your true self, like who you are at your core,” Zupich said.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is another word for your?
We don’t traditionally think of your as having synonyms, but there are several situations in which it can replace—or be replaced with—another term.
your own
The phrase your own is sometimes used as a more emphatic way of saying your, as in I’m sorry you had to pay with your own money, but you’ll be reimbursed.
one’s
The word you is sometimes used not to refer to the listener or reader but to any person in general, much like how the word one is sometimes used, as in You never know what might happen. Your can be used in this same way, as in When climbing, your first priority should be safety. A more formal way of saying this is When climbing, one’s first priority should be safety.
yours
Sometimes you can reword what you’re saying to use yours instead of your. For example, instead of saying I think this is your seat, you could say I think this seat is yours.
you
Sometimes, you is used where the word your could also be used, such as in sentences like this: I hadn’t heard about you getting lost. Historically, it was considered more proper to use your before gerunds (for example, getting in the preceding example), but using you is now more common and often sounds more natural.
yer
Yer is an informal spelling of your that’s sometimes used to reflect the way the word is pronounced in colloquial (conversational) speech, as in Pack yer bags!
ur
The form ur is sometimes used as a substitute for your in very informal communications, such as text messages or online posts, as in i love ur new look! However, ur can also mean you are.
your vs. you’re
Be careful! Sometimes, your is used when it should be you’re, and vice versa. You’re is a contraction of you are. Sometimes, they can even be used right next to each other, as in You’re your own worst enemy.
What can I say instead of your?
Sometimes, your is used informally to indicate all members of some group or category, as in Your average student learns this in high school. Although this is similar to the sense of your that can be replaced with one’s, one’s doesn’t quite work here. A simple way to rephrase the sentence is to say Average voters are not going to research every candidate and all of their proposed policies.
What is the antonym of your?
Strictly speaking, your doesn’t have a definitive antonym in the same sense that short is the antonym of long. Of course, possession and association are often distinguished by using contrasting possessives, such as in statements like This is your responsibility—it’s not my responsibility. In this sense, all of the other possessive words could be considered the opposite of your, including my, her, his, and their.
On the other hand, one person’s possession of something does not mean that someone else can’t possess it as well. This is indicated in a lot of popular expressions, such as what’s mine is yours, mi casa es su casa, and this land is your land; this land is my land.
What part of speech is the word your?
Your is the possessive form of the personal pronoun you. It’s often considered a possessive pronoun, but it functions as a possessive adjective (also called a possessive determiner). That’s a lot of labels for such a common word, but they essentially mean this: your shows possession by functioning as an adjective and modifying a noun (it never functions as a noun itself). The same thing can be said about my (the possessive form of the pronoun I) and our (the possessive form of the pronoun we). (The forms yours, mine, and ours stand alone as nouns and never accompany another noun as modifiers.)
In contrast, the word his can be used as both a possessive pronoun (as in That jacket is his) or a possessive adjective (as in That is his jacket). Possessive words like your commonly indicate possession or ownership, but they can also indicate things other than literal possession, like origin or other qualities (such as in phrases like your country).
Your is used along with second person pronouns (like you and yourself), which are used to address the person being spoken to or reading. In contrast, first person pronouns (like I, me, we, and us) are used to refer to the speaker or writer themselves. Their possessive forms include my, mine, our, and ours. Third person pronouns (like he, she, they, him, her, and them) refer to anyone other than the person doing the addressing or the ones being addressed. Third person possessive forms include his, her, hers, their, and theirs.
From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
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