"What's it worth"?

Question

Recently I encountered the sentence "What's it worth?" in a book.

I cannot understand the structure of this sentence.

From my perspective, "worth" means "value" in this sentence. But I would expect to see "What is ITS worth?"

Could you please help me in understanding the structure of this sentence?

Worth is a very odd word; it's been variously called a noun and a preposition, and it's got plenty of other odd features. — John Lawler, May 21 '23 at 16:24
Once the can is open, it is hard to put all the worms back in. As John Lawler says. "Worth is a very odd word; it's been variously called a noun and a preposition, and it's got plenty of other odd features. –" Voting to re-open. — Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_, May 21 '23 at 17:10
The dictionary says that worth means having a particular value, not just value. So "What is it worth?" means "What value does it have?" — Kate Bunting, May 21 '23 at 17:27
Grammatically, "worth" is an adjective in your example, more specifically it's one of just a handful of transitive adjectives. In "What is it worth" "It" is the subject, "is" the verb, and "what" and "worth" combine to form a predicative complement. — BillJ, May 21 '23 at 17:58
Does this answer your question? What is the lexical class of the word 'worth' when used in a sentence like "Is this apple worth $3?" Or What part of speech is worth?? — Edwin Ashworth, May 21 '23 at 18:14
Fuzzy stuff again. The evidence points to "worth" being an adjective in the OP's example. — BillJ, May 22 '23 at 06:12
@Edwin Ashworth: Your example is similar to what is in my mind "What part OF speech is worth?". You have used "OF" and that's the point. So, I believe that "What is ITS worth" must be correct. Equivalently, one may say the ugly and strange sentence "What is the worth OF it?" — Arash2020, May 22 '23 at 09:03
@Arash2020 the only thing wrong with "what is its worth" is that it sounds rather old fashioned; "what is its value" would be more likely today. But the validity or correctness of "what is its worth" is not evidence of the invalidity or incorrectness of "what is it worth." Both are correct, and the second is far more common in modern speech and writing. — phoog, May 22 '23 at 10:24
@phoog: Thanks so much. If "what is its worth" is correct but old-fashioned, you have made my day. — Arash2020, May 23 '23 at 09:41
@Arash2020 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=what+is+its+worth&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 — phoog, May 23 '23 at 17:45

"What's it worth"?

0 Answers0