Its

How to spell its

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce its

What does its mean?

1. pronounBelonging to or associated with a thing, animal, or idea previously mentioned.

Its in a sentence

• The dog wagged its tail.

• The book has lost its cover.

• Every coin has its two sides.

• The cat groomed its paws.

• The painting needs to be in its original frame.

Where does its come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word "its" is the possessive form of the pronoun "it", which descends from the Old English neuter pronoun "hit", meaning simply "it" or "that thing". For centuries English had no distinct neuter possessive at all, and writers used "his" even for inanimate objects, so a tree might lose "his" leaves. The modern form "its" only emerged around the late 1500s and early 1600s, built by adding the regular possessive "-s" to "it". Crucially, this possessive was formed without an apostrophe, exactly like the possessive pronouns "hers", "ours", and "theirs", none of which take one. The endless confusion with "it's" (the contraction of "it is" or "it has") exists only because the apostrophe rule for ordinary nouns pulls writers the wrong way; remembering that no possessive pronoun uses an apostrophe is the surest cure.

How the word is built

• Possessive form of "it", no apostrophe.

Words that sound like its

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• it's: A contraction of 'it is' or 'it has', where the apostrophe marks the omitted letters.