ours

The word 'ours' is a direct descendant of the Old English 'ūre', the genitive plural form of the first-person pronoun 'wē' (we). This Old English form is derived from the Proto-Germanic 'unsaraz', which itself originates from the Proto-Indo-European 'nes-', a root denoting the first-person plural. The modern form 'ours' emerged in Middle English, influenced by the possessive '-s' ending common in nouns and other pronouns, solidifying its function as an independent possessive pronoun. Its journey reflects a common grammaticalization path where a genitive case form evolves into a standalone word indicating possession, moving from an inflectional ending to a fixed lexical item.

The word is a possessive pronoun form derived from the genitive case of the first-person plural pronoun 'we'. It is not productively segmentable into distinct morphemes in Modern English.