English
it
It comes from Middle English hit, from Old English hit, from Proto-Germanic *hit ‘this’, from PIE *ḱe- ‘this’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ḱe-1‘this’reconstructed
- Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*hit1‘this’reconstructed
- Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*hit1reconstructed
- Old Englishc. 450–1150hit1
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500hit2as it
- Englishearliest quotation 1611it2
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, Middle English hit
- 2 Wiktionary, English it
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1611, The Holy Bible, London: […] Robert Barker: “That which groweth of it owne accord of thy…”.
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*ḱe-Wiktionary, Middle English hit‘this’reconstructed
- Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*hitWiktionary, Middle English hit‘this’reconstructed
- Proto-West Germanicc. 200–500 CE*hitWiktionary, Middle English hitreconstructed
- Old Englishc. 450–1150hitWiktionary, Middle English hit
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500hitWiktionary, English itas it
- Englishearliest quotation 1611itWiktionary, English it. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1611, The Holy Bible, London: […] Robert Barker: “That which groweth of it owne accord of thy…”
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with it, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *ḱe- ‘this, here’
Explore everything descended from *ḱe- →
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Today it means
pron The third-person singular neuter personal pronoun used to refer to an inanimate object, abstract entity, or non-human living thing.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “it”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Middle English hit. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.