See what it is on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Possibly a combination of what up with how goes it and similar phrases. First use appears c. 1972. See cite below.",
"head_templates": [
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"2": "phrase",
"head": "what it is?"
},
"expansion": "what it is?",
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}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "phrase",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "African-American Vernacular English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
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{
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"name": "English subordinate clauses",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1972, Odie Hawkins, Odie Hawkins:",
"text": "Mrs. Franklin breaks her embrace, begins running water into the sink to wash dishes...What it is, baby. What it is.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1997, April Sinclair, Ain't Gonna be the Same Fool Twice, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 181:",
"text": "\"What it is?\" David greeted me.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2001, Chris Fuhrman, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 162:",
"text": "A boy broke out of the crowd shouting, \"Hey! Hey! What it is, brothers, what it is?\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2007, K'wan, Still Hood, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 87:",
"text": "\"What it is, my niggaz?\" Hollywood gave True a pound then jerked him in for a hug.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A casual greeting."
],
"id": "en-what_it_is-en-phrase-Ew0toZsZ",
"links": [
[
"casual",
"casual"
],
[
"greeting",
"greeting"
]
],
"qualifier": "African-American Vernacular",
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, African-American Vernacular) A casual greeting."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "what up?"
},
{
"word": "what it do?"
},
{
"word": "what it be?"
}
],
"tags": [
"slang"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
{
"audio": "En-au-what it is.ogg",
"mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/1/1e/En-au-what_it_is.ogg/En-au-what_it_is.ogg.mp3",
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],
"word": "what it is"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Possibly a combination of what up with how goes it and similar phrases. First use appears c. 1972. See cite below.",
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
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"2": "phrase",
"head": "what it is?"
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "phrase",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
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"English lemmas",
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],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1972, Odie Hawkins, Odie Hawkins:",
"text": "Mrs. Franklin breaks her embrace, begins running water into the sink to wash dishes...What it is, baby. What it is.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "1997, April Sinclair, Ain't Gonna be the Same Fool Twice, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 181:",
"text": "\"What it is?\" David greeted me.",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2001, Chris Fuhrman, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, University of Georgia Press, →ISBN, page 162:",
"text": "A boy broke out of the crowd shouting, \"Hey! Hey! What it is, brothers, what it is?\"",
"type": "quote"
},
{
"ref": "2007, K'wan, Still Hood, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 87:",
"text": "\"What it is, my niggaz?\" Hollywood gave True a pound then jerked him in for a hug.",
"type": "quote"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A casual greeting."
],
"links": [
[
"casual",
"casual"
],
[
"greeting",
"greeting"
]
],
"qualifier": "African-American Vernacular",
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, African-American Vernacular) A casual greeting."
],
"tags": [
"slang"
]
}
],
"sounds": [
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"audio": "En-au-what it is.ogg",
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],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "what up?"
},
{
"word": "what it do?"
},
{
"word": "what it be?"
}
],
"word": "what it is"
}
Download raw JSONL data for what it is meaning in All languages combined (2.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (fbeafe8 and 7f03c9b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.