it

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English it, also hit,^[2][3] inherited from Old English hit,^[4][5][6] originally the neuter nominative and accusative of the third person singular pronoun,^[4][5][7] and so the neuter of he.^[3][8][9] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Germanic *hit.^[1] It is cognate with Old Frisian hit, Old Dutch hit and Dutch het.^[5][4][10] Etymonline, Ayto and Hoad derive it from the Germanic demonstrative stem of he, Proto-Germanic *hi-,^[4][11][10] which Etymonline takes back to Proto-Indo-European *ko- (“this”).^[4][6] Hoad and Weekley separate a parallel stem without the h-, the base of Old Saxon it, Old High German ez and German es.^[10][12][5] Barnhart compares Latin id and Old Irish ed and puts the h- down to the influence of the demonstrative stem,^[13] and Holthausen likewise calls hit a new formation after hē.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The neuter pronoun, standing for any neuter noun: Barnhart dates it to about 725, in Beowulf and Genesis A,^[13] and Dictionary.com to before 900.^[8] The OED's first quotation for an inanimate thing is from the Old English West Saxon Gospels (Luke).^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the pronoun replaced any neuter noun, whatever it meant, and as grammatical gender faded in Middle English it came to mean a thing or animal already spoken about.^[4][13] It also served from Old English on as the subject of impersonal statements about weather and the like, where nothing is referred to.^[4][5] The h- was lost first where the word was unstressed, though by 1200 the shorter form also appears under stress,^[10][4] and hit lived on as an occasional spelling nearly to the end of the 1500s.^[13] Dialects kept further forms such as 'd, et, het and id.^[15] The genitive was at first his; its arose only at the end of the 16th century,^[11][10] and Weekley notes that it is absent from the original Authorized Version, which has his, her, thereof and once it.^[12] The use of it itself as a possessive, recorded from the 14th century, lasted in literature to the 17th and later in dialect.^[10][15] After an intransitive verb the pronoun became a vague object from the 1540s, first in fight it out, and was a common Elizabethan idiom, as in Rowley's "Trip it, gipsies, trip it fine";^[4] Jerome's "hotel it, and inn it, and pub it" (1889) shows the same pattern.^[16] Johnson (1755) called it "the neutral demonstrative", used in speaking of things.^[17] The noun uses grew from the vagueness of the pronoun: a euphemism for sex around 1600,^[16][18] the player who must catch the others in children's games in 1842,^[4][2] and sex appeal by 1904 in Kipling, made popular in 1927 by Elinor Glyn's book of that title and by the application of It Girl to the film star Clara Bow.^[4] Weekley took the colloquial use for the consummate thing to be American, quoting Churchill's "This is it" of 20 June 1919.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 725 – Old English hit, neuter pronoun.^[13]
• 1104 – the form hit, with it following in 1128.^[13]
• before 1325 – a thing or animal spoken about.^[13]
• 1540s – vague object after an intransitive verb, in fight it out.^[4]
• 1598 – of a person, in contempt or humour, in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.^[5]
• c. 1600 – sexual intercourse, in Shakespeare's Hamlet.^[16] Etymonline dates this use to the 1610s, and the New Partridge to 1599.^[4][18]
• 1842 – the player who must catch the others in a children's game.^[4][2]
• 1904 – sex appeal, in Kipling.^[4]
• 1942 – this is it, the expected or dreaded moment has come.^[4]
• 1966 – that's it, there is no more.^[4]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. The thing already mentioned or easily identified, or an animal or young child whose sex is not given: The kettle is old, but it still works.^[5][19][20]
2. The person or thing in question, when asking or stating who or what it is: Who is it at the door?^[5][20]
3. An empty subject in statements about weather, time or distance, with nothing referred to: It was getting dark.^[6][20][5]
4. A subject or object standing in for a later phrase or clause: It is hard to say what she wants.^[20][5]
5. A subject that throws emphasis on what follows, with a relative clause: It was Anna who found the key.^[5][7]
6. A vague object after a verb, also one that is normally intransitive or a noun: fight it out, walk it.^[4][16][21]
7. Life or one's present situation in general: How is it going at the new job?^[19]
8. A person, in contempt or humour.^[5][21]

Adjective

1. (dialect) Its: The dog hurt it paw.^[2][15][10]

Noun

1. The player in a game such as tag who must catch the others.^[2][21][4]
2. Personal attractiveness or sex appeal.^[2][4]
3. (slang) Sexual intercourse.^[16][18]

Word family

• know-it-all
• its
• itself

Related words

• he

Usage notes

A different it, often It, is a shortening of Italian: Italian vermouth, only in gin and it, from the 1930s.^{[7][8][9][18]} The capitalised IT stands for information technology, recorded from 1982.^[5][19] The use of it for there in clauses stating that something exists is now chiefly American, in the South and South Midland.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
14. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
15. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
16. ^ a b c d e Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ a b c d Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
19. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
20. ^ a b c d Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
21. ^ a b c The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers