Etymology

our

O1U1R1

Today it means: Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our). Full definition →

Middle English oure ← Old English ūre ← Proto-Germanic *unseraz
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*n̥-s-ero-“our”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*unseraz“of us, our”
  3. Old English · inherited fromūre
  4. Middle English · inherited fromoure
  5. English todayour

From Middle English oure, from Old English ūre, ūser (“our”), from Proto-Germanic *unseraz (“of us, our”), from Proto-Indo-European *n̥-s-ero- (“our”). Cognate with Scots oor (“our”), West Frisian ús (“our”), Low German uns (“our”), Dutch onze (“our”), German unser, unsere (“our”) Danish vor (“our”), Norwegian vår (“our”), and more distantly Latin noster.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.