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Extensions Of Usage Of A Pronoun, Louise Pound

Department of English: Faculty Publications

[This article treats briefly, in the chronology of their appearance, the substantive uses of the pronoun of the third person neuter: the English and American game usage, two American colloquial or dialectal usages, and the newest usage, emerging from Hollywood, with its adjectival and nominal derivatives.]

The English pronoun of the third person neuter, it, has established itself as a substantive in various meanings, some of which are so widely current as to augur for them considerable vitality. An enumeration of these substantive uses in American English yields the following-- approximately, I think, in the order of their appearance.