vuestro

Forms

vuestro m sg (possessive, plural vuestros, feminine vuestra, feminine plural vuestras)^[1] Old Spanish texts spell the word uuestro, uestro, uostro and vestro besides vuestro.^[2][3] A shortened form vuesso (vueso) is very old and was rooted above all in León, next to Portuguese vosso; it is still used in Zamora and other Leonese areas, and Asturian has vuestru and vuesu.^[4][5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin voster (“your (of several people)”).^[4][6][7][1] Corominas takes it for the Vulgar Latin form that everywhere replaced classical vester, under the joint influence of noster (“our”) and vōs (“you”).^[4] De Vaan dates the forms the other way round: the one with ⟨o⟩ belongs to Latin before about 150 BC, the one with ⟨e⟩ to the later language.^[8] Bénaben and Gómez de Silva likewise explain the vowel by analogy with the word for “our”, which gave nuestro.^[9][10]

The same Latin word is Portuguese vosso, Galician voso, Asturian vuestru, Catalan vostre, Occitan vòstre, French votre, Italian vostro and Romanian vostru.^[1][11][12]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *wos-tero- beside the *wes-tero- that the Umbrian forms point to, and takes the Latin ⟨o⟩ as analogical; he gives the Indo-European possessive, with a question mark, as Proto-Indo-European *us-tero-.^[8] Wiktionary derives it from *westeros.^[1] Gómez de Silva sees in it the pronoun for “you” with the contrastive suffix *-tero-.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates vuestro to the Cantar de mio Cid, about 1140.^[4][6] In Alfonso X's prose the plural possessive is common: a text of about 1256 has seer uos an perdonados uuestros pecados “your sins will be forgiven you”.^[13] The Old Spanish Textual Archive counts it in 356 texts from 1272 on.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Besides the plural sense, the word has long served the polite address with vos, where it may refer to a single person, and the formulas for high titles, vuestra majestad and vuestra merced.^[15][16] According to Valdés's Diálogo de la lengua, in his time only foreigners still said vuestra merced, while vuestra and vuessa coexisted in vuestra señoría.^[4] Cervantes's characters still say vuessa merced;^[17] Cejador notes that vueso was by then old-fashioned and popular, except in that formula.^[17]

The Diccionario de Autoridades says it was used both by an inferior to a sovereign and by a sovereign to an inferior, and records the courtly phrase vuestro or muy vuestro with which someone put himself at another's disposal.^[16] The Academy's 1884 dictionary gave its grammar as identical to that of nuestro, and noted that with vos it refers to one possessor or several.^[15] Today it is the possessive of vosotros in Spain; in the Americas, where ustedes replaces vosotros, it survives only in formal and protocol language.^[18][19]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][6]
• c. 1256 – Alfonsine prose: uuestros pecados “your sins”.^[13]
• 1266 – the Leonese form vossa appears in a document from El Bierzo: vossa vida.^[4]
• 1525 – first records from the Americas, in Mexico City: para proveymiento de vuestra casa.^[20]
• 1726–1739 – the Diccionario de Autoridades records its use in addressing a sovereign, or by a sovereign, and the phrase muy vuestro.^[16]
• 1884 – the Academy defines it as a possessive of the second person whose grammar is that of nuestro.^[15]

Meanings

Determiner

1. your (belonging to or related to several people addressed as vosotros): Vuestros hijos ya han llegado.^[7][1]
2. (formal, dated) Your, of a single person addressed as vos: Agradecemos vuestra paciencia, señor.^[7][18]
3. Before certain titles of high rank, forming terms of address: vuestra majestad, vuestra santidad.^[7]
4. (colloquial) Before a personal name, adding an affective or emphatic tone.^[7]

Pronoun

1. yours (with the article): Nuestro coche es rojo; el vuestro, azul.^[1][19]
2. la vuestra (colloquial): your chance has come.^[7]
3. los vuestros: your family, or the group or party you belong to.^[19][18]

Related words

• nuestro
• vos
• vosotros
• Latin vester
• Portuguese vosso

Usage notes

As a pronoun and after the verb ser it is stressed (es vuestro), but before a noun it is unstressed.^[19] In the Americas it is used only in formal or protocol language.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. vuestro
3. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1929), Vocabulario medieval castellano, Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando
4. ^ 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, 843
5. ^ Academia de la Llingua Asturiana (2000), Diccionariu de la Llingua Asturiana, Uviéu: ALLA; online at https://mas.academiadelallingua.com/diccionariu, p. s.v. vuesu
6. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vos
7. ^ a b c d e f 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. vuestro
8. ^ 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
9. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. vuestro
10. ^ a b Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. vôtre
12. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. vosso
13. ^ 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. vuestro
14. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org
15. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1101
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 528
17. ^ a b Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 1170
18. ^ a b c d Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial
19. ^ a b c d Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vuestro
20. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. güestro