It vs Stuff - What's the difference?
it | stuff |
The third-person singular personal pronoun used to refer to an inanimate object, to an inanimate thing with no or unknown sex or gender.
A third-person singular personal pronoun used to refer to a child of unknown gender.
* 1847 , Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre , Chapter IV:
Used to refer to oneself when identifying oneself, often on the phone, but not limited to this situation.
The impersonal pronoun, used without referent as the subject of an impersonal verb or statement. (known as the dummy pronoun or weather it)
The impersonal pronoun, used as a placeholder for a delayed subject, or less commonly, object. (known as the dummy pronoun or, more formally in linguistics, a syntactic expletive)
All or the end; something after which there is no more.
(obsolete, relative) That which; what.
* 1643 , (Thomas Browne), Religio Medici , II.2:
One who is neither a he nor a she; a creature; a dehumanized being.
* 1995 , Neil Weiner, Sharon E. Robinson Kurpius, Shattered innocence (page 8)
* 1920 , (Herman Cyril McNeile), Bulldog Drummond Chapter 1
The person who chases and tries to catch the other players in the playground game of tag.
* 2000 , Katherine T. Thomas, Amelia M. Lee, Jerry R. Thomas, Physical education for children (page 464)
(British, uncountable) The game of tag.
(colloquial) most fashionable.
* Vibe , Vol. 15, No. 9, p. 202, September 2007:
* David Germain,
(language) Italian.
Italy.
Miscellaneous items; things; (with possessive) personal effects.
:
*
*:The Bat—they called him the Bat.. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
The tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object.
*Sir (c.1569-1626)
*:The workman on his stuff' his skill doth show, / And yet the ' stuff gives not the man his skill.
A material for making clothing; any woven textile, but especially a woollen fabric.
*1992 , Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p.147:
*:She was going out to buy some lengths of good woollen stuff for Louise's winter dresses.
Abstract substance or character.
*c.1599 , (William Shakespeare),
*:When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff
*c.1610 , (William Shakespeare), (The Tempest) ,
*:We are such stuff / As dreams are made on
(lb)
:
*{{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=3
, passage=It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Substitution for trivial details.
:
(lb) Narcotic drugs, especially heroin.
*1947 , William Burroughs, letter, 11 March:
*:For some idiotic reason the bureaucrats are more opposed to tea than to stuff .
Furniture; goods; domestic vessels or utensils.
*Sir (c.1564-1627)
*:He took away locks, and gave away the king's stuff .
(lb) A medicine or mixture; a potion.
:(Shakespeare)
(lb) Refuse or worthless matter; hence, also, foolish or irrational language; nonsense; trash.
*(John Dryden) (1631-1700)
*:Anger would indite / Such woeful stuff as I or Shadwell write.
(lb) A melted mass of turpentine, tallow, etc., with which the masts, sides, and bottom of a ship are smeared for lubrication.
:
Paper stock ground ready for use. When partly ground, it is called half stuff .
:(Knight)
To fill by crowding something into; to cram with something; to load to excess.
* Dryden
* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)
To fill a space with (something) in a compressed manner.
* Francis Bacon
(used in the passive) To sate.
(transitive, British, Australia, New Zealand) To be broken. (rfex)
To sexually penetrate. (rfex)
To be cut off in a race by having one's projected and committed racing line (trajectory) disturbed by an abrupt manoeuvre by a competitor.
To preserve a dead bird or animal by filling its skin.
To obstruct, as any of the organs; to affect with some obstruction in the organs of sense or respiration.
* Shakespeare
To form or fashion by packing with the necessary material.
* Jonathan Swift
(dated) To crowd with facts; to cram the mind of; sometimes, to crowd or fill with false or idle tales or fancies.
As a symbol it
is the iso 3166-1 two-letter (alpha-2) code for italy.As a noun stuff is
living room.it
English
(wikipedia it)Alternative forms
* (dialectal) (l)Etymology 1
From (etyl) (m), (m) ( > English dialectal . More at (l).Alternative forms
* itt (obsolete)Pronoun
- Put it over there.
- Take each day as it comes.
- She took the baby and held it in her arms.
- A child cannot quarrel with its' elders, as I had done; cannot give ' its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction.
- It' s me. John.
- It is nearly 10 o’clock.
- It ’s very cold today.
- It ’s lonely without you.
- It is easy to see how she would think that.
- I find it odd that you would say that.
- He saw to it that everyone would vote for him.
- Are there more students in this class, or is this it ?
- That's it —I'm not going to any more candy stores with you.
- In briefe, I am content, and what should providence add more? Surely this is it wee call Happinesse, and this doe I enjoy [...].
Quotations
* (English Citations of "it")Derived terms
(Derived terms) * buy it * do it * for it * move it * that’s it * watch itSee also
* he * her * him * I * me * she * thee * them * they * thou * us * we * ye * youNoun
(en noun)- Too often, children become an "it " in their homes and their humanness is devalued.
- His master glanced up quickly, and removed the letter from his hands. "I'm surprised at you, James," he remarked severely. "A secretary should control itself. Don't forget that the perfect secretary is an it : an automatic machine—a thing incapable of feeling.…"
- In the next game, Adam and Tom will be it …
- When there are only two children left who haven't been tagged, I will stop the game, and we will start over with those children starting as the Its .
- Let's play it at breaktime.
Adjective
(-)- Going away for the weekend and feel the need to profile en route? This is the "it " bag.
Hilarious ‘Kick-Ass’ delivers bloody fun, Associated Press, 2010:
- With Hit Girl, Moretz is this year's It Girl, alternately sweet, savage and scary.
Etymology 2
Abbreviation
(Abbreviation) (head)Derived terms
* gin and it, gin-and-ItSee also
* ITStatistics
*stuff
English
(wikipedia stuff)Noun
(en-noun)George Goodchild
Yesterday’s fuel, passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).}}
Usage notes
* The textile sense is increasingly specialized and sounds dated in everyday contexts.Verb
(en verb)- She stuffed the turkey for Thanksgiving using her secret stuffing recipe.
- Lest the gods, for sin, / Should with a swelling dropsy stuff thy skin.
- The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.
- He stuffed his clothes into the closet and shut the door.
- Put roses into a glass with a narrow mouth, stuffing them close together and they retain smell and colour.
- I’m stuffed after having eaten all that turkey, mashed potatoes and delicious stuffing.
- I got stuffed by that guy on the supermoto going into that turn, almost causing us to crash.
- I'm stuffed , cousin; I cannot smell.
- An Eastern king put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion, and placed upon the tribunal.