Sinograph Addenda · Signs

其its · qí · his, her, its, their

its

Where it comes from

A winnowing basket on its stand — the classic borrowed picture: the basket later took itself a new character, and the pronoun kept this one. Rank 6 of the corpus: his, her, its, their. Taught in the master’s-opening chapter.

How to remember it

A basket that holds everything and owns nothing of it: its. The commonest possessive in the classics rides a piece of farm equipment.

In the wild