tu

Forms

tu (plural tus, the same for both genders)^[1] Old Spanish had a masculine to (plural tos) and a feminine tu or tue before the noun.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish tu, the unstressed form of the possessive that continues inherited from Latin tuus (“your, yours”).^[2][4][1] In Romance the Latin possessive split into an unstressed form used before the noun, Old Spanish masculine to and feminine tue or ⟨tu⟩, and a stressed form, tuyo; both are recorded from the earliest texts.^[2] Gómez de Silva derives the feminine from the older ⟨tue⟩, from tua, which lost its second syllable when it stood unstressed before a noun, and explains the later masculine ⟨tu⟩ as modelled on the feminine.^[5] Bénaben traces the masculine ⟨to⟩ to a form ⟨tuum⟩ contracted to ⟨tum⟩ in the Latin of Spain.^[6] The Academy's dictionary, by contrast, describes the word as a shortened form of ⟨tuyo⟩, as its 1869 edition already did.^[7][8]

The same Latin word is Portuguese teu, Asturian to, Catalan teu, French ton, Italian tuo and Romanian tău.^[9][10][11] Nascentes explains the Portuguese masculine as coming through an older tou influenced by meu.^[12]

The Latin word is the possessive adjective of tū (“you”).^[13][14] It goes back to *towos, and de Vaan reconstructs *tu-o- (“your”) for Proto-Indo-European.^[13][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Menéndez Pidal's vocabulary of the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy) records tu as the feminine possessive.^[15][2] The masculine plural appears in the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo (c. 1201): „Di-m', ¿ó son tos dineros” “tell me, where is your money?”.^[16]

Semantic evolution

Old Spanish often put the article before the possessive: the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (c. 1215) has „al tu padre” “to your father”, and Alfonso X's General Estoria (1280) „en las tus cosas” “in your affairs”, with los tos for “your people, your household”.^[16][17] The old masculine to gave way to tu for both genders, and the stressed tuyo remained the form used after the noun or alone.^[2][5]

The Diccionario de Autoridades treated it under the pronoun tú, saying that used as an adjective it means the same as tuyo.^[18] Salvá (1846) entered it as a possessive pronoun, and the Academy's 1869 edition called it an apocope of tuyo that always comes before the noun it agrees with.^[19][8] Its form does not change for gender, and the plural tus marks several things possessed, not several possessors.^[20] Today it is used even in the parts of the Americas that use vos instead of tú.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses tu as a feminine possessive.^[15]
• c. 1201 – the Disputa del alma y el cuerpo has the masculine plural tos dineros.^[16]
• c. 1215 – the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca has al tu padre, with the article.^[16]
• 1280 – Alfonso X's General Estoria has las tus cosas and los tos.^[17]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades equates the adjective with tuyo.^[18]
• 1846 – Salvá enters it as a possessive pronoun.^[19]
• 1869 – the Academy's dictionary calls it an apocope of tuyo.^[8]

Meanings

Determiner

1. your (of the person addressed as tú), placed before the noun: Me gusta tu chaqueta.^[7][1]
2. (colloquial) Your, of people in general (an indefinite possessor): Con los años aprendes a cuidar tu salud.^[7]
3. (colloquial) Before a person's name, adding affection or emphasis: Ahí viene tu Marta.^[7]

Related words

• tuyo
• tú
• Latin tuus
• Portuguese teu

Usage notes

Tu is unstressed and written without an accent; the subject pronoun tú “you”, has its own entry and keeps the written accent.^[4][7] After the noun, or standing alone, Spanish uses tuyo: un amigo tuyo, es tuyo.^[2][8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 681
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. tu
4. ^ a b Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tú
5. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. tu
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. tu
7. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. tu
8. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 770
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
10. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. to
11. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. teu
12. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. teu
13. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
14. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. tu
16. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. tu
17. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. tu
18. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. s.v. tu
19. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 1082
20. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. tu