It (pronoun)

It is a third-person, singular neuter pronoun (nominative (subjective) case and oblique (objective) case) in Modern English.

Usage
The word and term it can be used for either a subject or an object in a sentence and can describe any physical or psychological subject or object. The genitive form its has been used to refer to human babies and animals, although with the passage of time this usage has come to be considered too impersonal in the case of babies, as it may be thought to demean a conscious being to the status of a mere object. This use of it is also criticized when used as a rhetorical device to dehumanize a speaker's enemies, implying that they were little more than animals or objects. The word remains in common use however, and its use increases with the degree to which the speaker views an object of speech as impersonal. For example, a cat or dog is often referred to as it, especially if the dog is not known by the speaker, or if the dog's gender is unknown. However, a person may also say it when referring to his or her own pet.

It is often used for idiomatic phrases such as "Is it a boy or a girl?" Once the gender of a child has been established, the speaker or writer generally switches to gender-specific pronouns.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge proposed using it in a wider sense in all the situations where a gender-neutral pronoun might be desired:

The children's author E. Nesbit consistently wrote in this manner, often of mixed groups of children: "Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to get out of the carriage."

In earlier Middle English, arising from Old English, the pronoun was hit (similar to Dutch het and West Frisian hit with the same meaning), with the unaspirated it being an unaccented form. The genitive was his, with the new form its only arising by analogy in later Middle English.

It is used for a thing previously mentioned or easily identified.

The pronoun it also serves as a placeholder subject in sentences with no identifiable actor, such as "It rained last night", "It boils down to what you're interested in", or the impersonal "It was a dark and stormy night".

See also
 Contraction (grammar)

 Generic antecedents
 Gender-specific pronoun
 English personal pronouns

References

External links

 William Malone Baskervill and James Witt Sewel, An English Grammar, 1896.
 On some Philological Peculiarities in the English Authorized Version of the Bible. By Thomas Watts, Esq.
 'It', The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).

Category:Modern English personal pronouns