Word.ws English Dictionary

what it is

what it is phrase: a casual greeting.

Phrase

what it is?

  1. (slang, African-American Vernacular) A casual greeting.
    • Mrs. Franklin breaks her embrace, begins running water into the sink to wash dishes...What it is, baby. What it is.1972, Odie Hawkins, Odie Hawkins
    • "What it is?" David greeted me.1997, April Sinclair, Ain't Gonna be the Same Fool Twice, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 181

Synonyms of what it is

Origin of what it is

Possibly a combination of what up with how goes it and similar phrases. First use appears c. 1972. See cite below.

Questions about what it is

What does what it is mean?
What it is means a casual greeting.
What part of speech is what it is?
What it is is a phrase.

Words near what it is in the dictionary

  1. what is your name
  2. what is your phone number
  3. what is your problem
  4. what it be
  5. what it do
  6. what it is
  7. what it takes
  8. what kind of music do you like
  9. what languages do you speak
  10. what next
  11. what nonsense

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: what it is (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-what it is.ogg, en-us-what it is.ogg.

Cite this entry: “what it is.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/what_it_is. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.