It in this case is “the general state of affairs”.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [October 27, 1999, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/4 "1999-10-27T19:09:00Z")
Though pronouns are noun substitutes, a pronoun doesn’t have to substitute for a particular noun in each case. Some are indefinate (e.g., They say that falling in love is wonderful).
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [October 27, 1999, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/5 "1999-10-27T19:10:00Z")
Though pronouns are noun substitutes, a pronoun doesn’t have to substitute for a particular noun in each case. Some are indefinate (e.g., They say that falling in love is wonderful). That’s what’s happening with “It is raining.”
Other languages have the same construction.
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### Author:  [@Alphagene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alphagene)
#### Post date: [October 27, 1999, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/6 "1999-10-27T19:16:00Z")
C’est vrai.
* * *
Back off, man. I’m a scientist.
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### Author:  [@metroshane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/metroshane)
#### Post date: [October 27, 1999, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/7 "1999-10-27T19:35:00Z")
“It’s”
is a reflexive pronoun that includes the verb. you could as easily said, the day is nice.
## just a guess
We’re all here, because we’re not all there!
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### Author:  [@MrKnowItAll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrKnowItAll)
#### Post date: [October 27, 1999, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/8 "1999-10-27T21:46:00Z")
I’ll have to second Mr. Hobson on “it” meaning “the general state of affairs”, or perhaps more specifically “the condition of the weather”.
I have to admit, for a second or two I thought that somehow “raining” was acting as a noun and “it” referred to it. A little research showed me I was wrong. I hate it when that happens.
* * *
“I’m not conceited. Conceit is a fault, and I don’t have any faults.”
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [October 28, 1999, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/9 "1999-10-28T00:35:00Z")
Verb is a noun.
But nouns are not verbs.
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### Author:  [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)
#### Post date: [October 28, 1999, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/10 "1999-10-28T01:28:00Z")
Yes, it would be nice to know what ‘it’ in this sentence refers to, wouldn’t it?
Yes, the correlate word showed up in French in a previous post here, and the German is ‘Es regnet,’ and maybe you can count Spanish in, because, although ‘Llueve’ suffices, Spanish leaves out even subject pronouns that do have explicit referents most of the time.
One the linguistic types here, though, ought to tell us whether this construction goes back to proto-Indoeuropean. If ‘it’ refers to the supernatural, you’d figure we’d say ‘he’ or ‘she’, in line with all those gods and goddesses formed in our image.
metroshane:
‘It’s’ is, of course, a contraction of the pronoun ‘it’ with the verb ‘is’. I don’t think anybody would use the term ‘reflexive’ for this construction. A reflexive **verb** phrase is ‘[He] hit himself,’ because what hit (the subject) and what **was** hit are the same but are separately expressed here.
MrKnowItAll:
As to your acting-as-a-noun thesis, it doesn’t really sound all that bad. The English ‘-ing’ verb form is considered a gerund when not part of a compound verb form (a progressive tense). _Gerunds_ or _verbals_ act as either nouns or adjectives, as in ‘Raining is mostly what it does around here,’ or ‘The working man is tired.’ In a progressive-tense verbal construction, as ‘I am working,’ it would seem the ‘-ing’ verb form could be considered an adjective modifying ‘I’. Then, in ‘It is raining,’ ‘raining’ could be considered an predicate adjective modifying the indefinite ‘it’. Then, in English, adjectives can stand for whatever nouns or pronouns they can modify, so ‘raining’ can stand in for whatever ‘it’ is. . .in which case, we don’t have to worry about what ‘it’ is, right? You mean you can’t get with it, just because you don’t know what ‘it’ is?
Ray (It’ll never be the same.)
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [October 28, 1999, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/11 "1999-10-28T02:33:00Z")
**handy** :
> [@](#):
>
> Verb is a noun.
> But nouns are not verbs.
Obviously, you have not had anyone _gift_ you, lately.
* * *
Tom~
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### Author:  [@Byzantine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Byzantine)
#### Post date: [October 28, 1999, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-phrases-help/4268/12 "1999-10-28T06:08:00Z")
I always thought a pronoun was one that lost its amateur status :o
* * *
Best!
Byz