# its

Pronunciation: say "ITS" /ɪts/

## Determiner

1. Belonging to or connected with a thing, animal, or organization already mentioned.
   - Simple: Belonging to a thing or animal already mentioned.
   - _The town is proud of its old bridge._
   - _Every plant needs its own space to grow._

## Pronoun

3. That which belongs to it, used without a following noun; rare and usually avoided by rephrasing.
   - Simple: The thing that belongs to it, used with no noun after it.

## Contraction

2. Obsolete spelling of it's ('it is'), from the seventeenth century before apostrophes were fixed; today the same spelling is an error. *(obsolete)* — Obsolete spelling of it's.
   - Simple: An old spelling of it's, meaning 'it is', without the apostrophe.

## Other meanings

- (noun) Plural of it as a noun: several beings referred to as 'it', or several players who are the chaser in tag.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3** — This is "it" plus the possessive marker "-s," from the earlier form "it's" (now considered nonstandard). It began to replace "his" as the possessive of the neuter pronoun in the Early Modern English period and had fully done so by the 1700s.
**Meaning 2** — This is a contraction of "it is."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/its (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).