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Me and a friend got into an argument. He says that you can say "Take my word for this". I say that the proper use is "Take my word for it".

Could someone elaborate on each of those and tell us who is right?

Dani K GoldyGuy
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    Hello, Dani. Have you done any research? Both versions appear to be in reasonably common use when Google searches for "take my word for it" / "take my word for this" are carried out and checked for relevance. Your preferred form is apparently eight times as common as his. I prefer your choice. But it's not your friend who's wrong. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 30 '14 at 16:11
  • This is not really related to the idiom, it's just the difference between it and this, which is something you should be able to find in any good dictionary or reference work. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 30 '14 at 16:26
  • Take my word on* the matter,*, it's ridiculous to speak of "proper" usage here. – FumbleFingers Aug 30 '14 at 17:07
  • "Take my word for it" is the usual idiom, it's that simple – Fattie Aug 30 '14 at 17:33
  • This is actually not an idiom, it's a cliche. (Not the disparaging term, the linguistic one). An idiom is non-compositional (its meaning is not the sum of its parts), while a cliche is fully compositional. – Daniel Aug 30 '14 at 19:24
  • @Daniel An idiom is often non-compositional. Idiom: 3a ...a peculiarity of phraseology approved by the usage of a language, and often having a significance other than its grammatical or logical one [OED/Supplement; bolding mine]. Also, 'A wide variety of idiomatic phenomena, including compositional and non-compositional idioms' [www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nchang/pubs/ChangFischer00.doc]. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 30 '14 at 21:25
  • @EdwinAshworth I confess to not having access to the OED. The dictionaries I check, both online and off, define idiom as e.g. "an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements" - [Dictionary.com]. Your other link actually bears out what I said. When it says "compositional", it means "partially compositional". Its recurrent example of this is spill the beans, which metaphorically evokes two discrete referents (you can break it down), whereas a fully non-compositional idiom such as kick the bucket only refers to one idea. – Daniel Aug 30 '14 at 22:08
  • But I haven't seen a non-metaphorical phraseme such as "take [someone's] word for it" called an idiom. – Daniel Aug 30 '14 at 22:10
  • CDO classes it as one. And 'to a fault' (CID) is classed as one, though there is little hint of metaphor. It's the unusual word choice and/or phraseology that is the controlling factor in this analysis / definition. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 30 '14 at 22:20
  • There's no unusual word choice in "take someone's word for it" though. Word is used this way in many contexts. I wonder if the issue can be reconciled by classing the usage of the word "idiom" in more than one scope. A broader meaning vs. a more technical meaning. If so, we (and quite a few dictionaries) are just talking past each other. Hmm, maybe I'll ask a question. – Daniel Aug 30 '14 at 22:24
  • @Daniel I'd agree completely that the situation here is about broader / narrower definitions of 'idiom'. But your choosing one as being ' the definition' prompted me to choose the other as being equally valid (and in major works on idioms, such as 'Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English', often the preferred choice). (The 'fixed expressions' is to cover expressions containing no metaphorical or grammatical quirks; I'd prefer 'Fixed Expressions including Idioms'.) – Edwin Ashworth Aug 31 '14 at 15:46

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Yes, you are right that the original phrase is the one with it. And yes, your friend is right that you can use the variant with this as well. As is often the case with language, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

The actual usage stats from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus look as follows:

                              COCA    BNC

take my word for it/this     141/7   49/1
take his word for it/this     17/0    4/0
take her word for it/this     16/1    0/0
take your word for it/this    58/1   16/0
take our word for it/this     17/0    3/0
take their word for it/this   30/0    6/0

So the variant with this is not entirely unheard of, but the one with it is vastly preferred, for all determiners and on both sides of the pond.

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