1. A formal phrase used as a valediction at the close of a letter, similar to "sincerely." Yours truly, Jane
2. Me; I; myself. My boss claims credit for all these projects, but do you know who did all the work? Yours truly!Everybody is jumping on their bandwagon, but you can count out yours truly, because I'm loyal to my team.
1 (informal, often humorous) I/me: Steve came first, Robin second, and yours truly came last. ♢ And of course, all the sandwiches will be made by yours truly. 2 (Yours Truly) (American English, formal, written) used at the end of a formal letter before you sign your name
I, me, myself. This phrase has been used as a closing formula for letters since the late eighteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century it was also being used as a synonym for “I,” as in George A. Sala’s The Baddington Peerage (1860): “The verdict will be ‘Guilty, my Lord,’ against yours truly.”
I. For whatever reason of modesty (or false modesty) that prevented speakers or writers from using the first-person singular pronoun “I,” the “yours truly” convention was established. It came from the standard letter closing. It sounded mannered when it was first used in the 19th century and even more so now. Other equally stilted circumlocutions for “I” or “me” used in writing are “your reporter” (still found in alumni class notes) and “your correspondent.”
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