Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - it

Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English. Note: 'It' is a third person singular pronoun. 'It' is used as the subject or object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition. 1. You use it to refer to an object, animal, or other thing that has already been mentioned. It’s a wonderful city, really. I’ll show it to you if you want... My wife has become crippled by arthritis. She is embarrassed to ask the doctor about it... PRON 2. You use it to refer to a child or baby whose sex you do not know or whose sex is not relevant to what you are saying. She could, if she wanted, compel him, through a court of law, to support the child after it was born... PRON 3. You use it to refer in a general way to a situation that you have just described. He was through with sports, not because he had to be but because he wanted it that way... PRON 4. You use it before certain nouns, adjectives, and verbs to introduce your feelings or point of view about a situation. It was nice to see Steve again... It seems that you are letting things get you down. PRON 5. You use it in passive clauses which report a situation or event. It has been said that stress causes cancer... PRON 6. You use it with some verbs that need a subject or object, although there is no noun that it refers to. Of course, as it turned out, three-fourths of the people in the group were psychiatrists... PRON 7. You use it as the subject of ‘be’, to say what the time, day, or date is. It’s three o’clock in the morning... It was a Monday, so she was at home... PRON 8. You use it as the subject of a link verb to describe the weather, the light, or the temperature. It was very wet and windy the day I drove over the hill to Milland... It’s getting dark. Let’s go inside... PRON 9. You use it when you are telling someone who you are, or asking them who they are, especially at the beginning of a phone call. You also use it in statements and questions about the identity of other people. ‘Who is it?’ he called.—‘It’s your neighbor.’... Hello Freddy, it’s only me, Maxine. PRON 10. When you are emphasizing or drawing attention to something, you can put that thing immediately after it and a form of the verb ‘be’. It was the country’s rulers who devised this system... PRON c darkgreen]emphasis 11. You use it in expressions such as it’s not that or it’s not simply that when you are giving a reason for something and are suggesting that there are several other reasons. It’s not that I didn’t want to be with my family... PHRASE 12. if it wasn’t for: see be IT IT is an abbreviation for information technology.