/ðɪs/
[adjective/pronoun] Used to refer to a person, thing, or idea that is near in space, time, or thought. It points to something specific that the speaker wants to identify clearly.
The word 'this' has barely changed in over a thousand years — one of the oldest, most stubborn survivors in the English language.
Few words in English are as ancient and as unchanged as 'this.' It comes directly from Old English 'þis' (written with the letter thorn, which made a 'th' sound), the neuter singular form of a demonstrative pronoun system used to point at things nearby. Old English had a rich set of demonstrative forms — 'þes' for masculine, 'þēos' for feminine, and 'þis' for neuter — all of which could change depending on their grammatical role in a sentence. Over time, as English shed much of its complex gender system, these forms collapsed and simplified, leaving 'this' as the all-purpose singular demonstrative we know today.
The Old English forms themselves descended from Proto-Germanic, the ancestral language spoken by the Germanic tribes of northern Europe around two thousand years ago. The Proto-Germanic root is reconstructed as *þa- or *þi-, which was a demonstrative base meaning 'that' or 'this.' This same root gave rise to similar pointing words across all the Germanic languages: Old Norse 'þessi,' Old High German 'dese,' Gothic 'þis,' and modern German 'dies' and Dutch 'dit' all belong to the same ancient family. Even the th- sound itself has been preserved remarkably faithfully across these languages and across the centuries.
Go back even further, and you reach Proto-Indo-European, the prehistoric ancestor of most European and South Asian languages. Linguists reconstruct a demonstrative root *to- or *ti- in Proto-Indo-European that was used for pointing and identifying. This root branched out in many directions: it gave Latin the word 'iste' (that one), and it fed into the Greek article and demonstrative systems as well. The branching is striking — the same ancient impulse to point at something and say 'this, here, now' produced a whole family of words across hundreds of languages and thousands of miles.
What is most remarkable about 'this' is how little it has changed. Most everyday English words have shifted dramatically in sound, spelling, and meaning since the Old English period. But 'this' has stayed close to its roots, both in form and in function. It still does exactly what it did in the poems of Beowulf and the laws of King Alfred: it reaches out and grabs something, pulling the listener's attention toward a specific object, moment, or idea. Its companion word 'that' — from Old English 'þæt' — points away, at something more distant. Together, they form one of the most basic and enduring tools of human communication.
Interestingly, 'this' is also connected, through that same Proto-Germanic root, to a cluster of common English words. The Old English demonstrative base helped produce 'the' (from Old English 'þe' and 'þæt'), 'they' (borrowed from Old Norse 'þeir,' which shares the same Proto-Germanic root), 'then,' 'there,' and 'though.' These small, common words — the ones we barely notice — form a quiet constellation of pointers, connectors, and qualifiers, all descended from the same ancient instinct to orient ourselves in space, time, and thought. 'This' sits at the centre of that constellation, humble and ancient, pointing forward as it always has.