'It' Once More: A Supplementary Note

Abstract

THE NEUTER pronoun of the third person it has developed and still develops interesting extensions of usage. In this slight note I wish to comment on a use initially recorded in England in the 1930s and again at the half-century turn and given recent brief mention in the United States. These entries term it of American origin, but it has been defined and illustrated only partially as yet, and somewhat better in England than in the United States. Supplementation is needed, I think, in the lexicography of both countries. I refer to what might be called the it of 'finality,' its scope and uses. A preliminary backward glance at some of the familiar extensions of meaning of the pronoun may be in place. The first nonstandard usage to find lexicographical recognition in recent times was the well-known it for the central person or protagonist in children's games such as tag or drop the handkerchief. The historical OED did not enter this it (Vol. V, 1901), but it has place in the Supplement of 1933. Its initial appearance was in Wright's EDD (Vol. II, 1902). The latter work also records a second use, that for stupid 'persons of either sex, especially infants, or as a term of contempt.' This meaning, like the preceding, is current in America, e.g., 'The big it pushed me off the sidewalk'; 'The big it didn't know enough to speak up.' Neither of these usages, that in games and that of disparagement, is noted in the Craigie-Hulbert DAE, which is not primarily interested in the colloquial or dialectal or in slang and mostly ends its survey with 1900. A third colloquial usage in America is a pejorative one for a pretentious person who overrates him or herself: 'He thinks he's the high mogul; he thinks he's it'; 'She thinks she's Madame Ittsky.' Primarily, however, deference to someone of final authority rather than disparagement is implied. There are examples of this emphatic predicate use from early in the century. Unquestionably American in origin is a fourth use, that for personal magnetism or sex appeal. This followed the popularity of the actress Clara Bow as the 'It Girl' in Elinor Glyn's film of that name in 1925. It found immediate currency, though not recognition in our standard dictionaries. Its early progeny, the adjectives itty, ittish, itful and the noun itfulness, had only brief existence, principally in moving picture magazines.2