What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?

thanks. >:( like i needed that.

It means...err...does not compute...

* EXPLODES *

I haven't the slightest idea. Probably another exception of the english language...

btw, Germans say "How much time is it?" (literal translation -- Wie viel Uhr ist es?)

Uh, What time is it...uhh. Oh crap. That..uhh..Well...You see...ask your mother.

Crap, now I'll be thinking of it all week!

Damn it!
Now I am gonna have to tell all my friends this too, I am gonna get lynched tomorrow at school.

it = now

The English language is weird like that, where "it" takes up a grammatical place in a sentence, when "it" doesn't make any sense.

What time is it?
How's it going?
It is raining.

It is the subject.

I think 'it' implies a subject of "now."

Sort of similar to "Get over here." implying a subject of 'you.'

Que hora es?

(I know it's missing the upside down "?" at the fornt)

"It" means "the time." As in, "what is the current state of the time?" But "time" is usually used to replace "current state" so people can just use it to avoid being redundant.

I guess.

That is a good question..and over to you Admins:

How do you do?

This seems to be most fitting.

The presence of words like "it" is explained by one of the predominant theories in linguistics these days- principles and parameters theory.

The applicable argument is this: one parameter that languages can vary on is whether an overt subject must be present in the spoken worm of a sentence. Languages like Spanish or Latin are set to "no"; so you can say something like "laetus sum" (I am happy) without having an explicit word for "I".

On the other hand, in English the parameter is set to "yes", so subjects must be present, even when there isn't one that's logically required. Thus you have sentences like "It is raining" in which the word it has absolutely no lexical meaning; it just fills the grammatical requirement of the sentence.

Likewise, in the question "What time is it?", it is added to fill the (otherwise absent) role of subject. ('what time' doesn't function as a subject; it's actually a predicate nominative moved to the front of the sentence because that's what wh- words tend to do).

Thus, 'it' doesn't mean anything; it's merely there to fulfill the grammatical requirements of the English language.

It's like asking what the s in "He runs" means, or the 'to' in "I know him to be intelligent".

[Edit- a good example is the Spanish version that Avenger posted: note that it merely asks "Que hora es?" No word for 'it', because Spanish has the opposite parameter setting.]

Option 1:
What time is it [at this moment]. -- "at this moment" is omitted, because it's an obvious implication

Option 2:
What time is [the time] -- someone mentioned tihs already.

It's a trap.

French does the same thing.

Quelle heure est-il?
(Which hour is it?)

One replies
Il est vingt heures dix-huit.
(it is 8:18 PM)

You could ask the same question for "il"

If you think about it, it does make sense .. in each of those situations it replaces an obvious statement


What time is [the current time]?
How's [everything/your life/things] going?
[The state of the weather/climate right now] is raining.

I'm cool. Why?

Essentially: What time is the time?

If people would speak proper English, the question should be worded "what is the current time?"

With your hair, play not, for when you are 900, 1000 will it look!

Yay for grammatical debates!



This makes sense, but I'm not sure it addresses the question precisely. Spanish and Latin may not require a subject in their sentences, but the subject is still implied. For instance, the English sentence "Go over there," the subject is by implication "you". The subject is not expressed, but it's still there. Besides, that seems like the easy way out.

I think, as others here have stated, the "it" in question means "time". As near as I can tell, the confusion arises because of the multiple definitions of the word "time" at work here. According to m-w.com:


The first definition would be time the "it" refers to, while the second would be the other one. The question could be rephrased: "What moment is the current period?", or "What moment is time at right now?"

Alternatively, both could refer to the "moment" definition: "What moment is the current moment?"

It would seem to me to be referring to the current state of the world.


There are some famous examples of grammatically correct English sentences being really screwed up. It's really a pretty rubbish language.

'it' is usually used to refer to objects in spatial dimensions, but in the case of "what time is it" it refers in the same way but to a non-spatial dimension, further reinforcing unified spacetime!

But "what time is it" is largely an irrelevant question, because we all know that time doesn't even exist.

I think there's a reason why people don't usually think about stuff like this. It gets confusing and produces headaches.

Although i'm drunk I think "it" must refer to the timepiece in question.

If humans could spurt of the time naturally, there woudl be no "it" involved. But chances are it's some kind of left over from the 18/19th century.

Kind of like posh/P.O.S.H.

"It" refers to the current state of things given the context of the sentence - it could be temporal, animal, vegetable, mineral.

Probably because people don't care. That's why English is the way it is.