our
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "our", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "our" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "our" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
our is aEnglishdet. It means: Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our). Pronounced /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/. It ranks #76 in English word frequency. Often confused with oz and ow.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | our |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Det |
| IPA | /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #76 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for our is 3 letters long, classified as adet, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈaʊə(ɹ)/. Corpus data places it at rank #76 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for our in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "oz", "ow", "ox", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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”), Germ… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is our, spelled O-U-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Belonging to us, excluding the person(s) being addressed (exclusive our).
- 2Belonging to us, including the person(s) being addressed (inclusive our).
- 3Of, from, or belonging to any entity that the speaker is a part of or identifies with, such as place of employment or education, nation, region, language, etc.
- 4Belonging to people in general.
- 5Belonging to everyone being addressed.
- 6Belonging to an individual being addressed; used especially of a person in the speaker's care, or to whom advice or instruction is being given.
- 7Belonging to a third person, especially someone in the speaker's care.
- 8Used to imply connection between the speaker's experiences or activities and a group of listeners.
- 9Used before a person's name to indicate that the person is in one's family, or is a very close friend.
Etymology
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.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #76 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter O in our English index: