The Thing Is

The thing is, certain phrases in English crop up as little verbal stepping stones.

One of those phrases is “the thing is.” It’s a little bit like a baseball pitcher’s wind-up, where the beginning of the move gets you ready for the pitch.

The thing is, this phrase can seem like a tautology—something that’s obviously true no matter what, so it doesn’t really have any value or added meaning at all, like “it is what it is.”

On the other hand, the thing is that you can buy some time to collect your thoughts. Maybe that’s why it seems a little jarring to read here, since I have as much time as I’d like to collect my thoughts while I’m writing. You’re certainly more likely to come across “the thing is” in spoken word conversations than in writing.

The thing is, it is what is is. What’s a “thing”, though?

The word "thing" comes from Old English, pronounced very similarly, but with a letter at the start of the word that represents that “th” sound: þing. This wasn’t quite the same word as today—it…