GeezerVison

From Middle English if, yif, yef, from Old English ġif (“if”), from Proto-West Germanic *jabu, *jabē, from Proto-Germanic *jabai (“when, if”). Cognate with Scots gif (“if, whether”), Saterland Frisian af, of (“if, whether”), West Frisian oft (“whether”), Dutch of (“or, whether, but”), Middle Low German ef, if, af, of ("if; whether"; > German Low German of), German ob (“if, whether”), Icelandic ef (“if”).

• enPR: ĭf, IPA^(key): /ɪf/

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• Rhymes: -ɪf

if

1. Supposing that, assuming that, in the circumstances that; suppositive used to introduce a condition that may be (or prove to be) either true or false.

   I'll do it next week if I have time.

   Fetch me a cold beer if there's one in the fridge.

   If I give you the money, will you buy it for me?

   If you prefer, I can come tomorrow instead.

   1. (computing) A keyword that invokes conditional processing: in the event that a given condition is true, execute the given statement(s) (otherwise execute other statements).

      if A then B else C

2. Supposing that; used with past or past perfect subjunctive to indicate a counterfactual or hypothetical condition.

   If she hadn't told me, I wouldn't know.

   If he understood how this made me feel right now, he'd be O.K. with it too.

   If I was King of England, I'd make you my Queen.

   She could have used my car if the battery hadn't been flat.

   1. (usually hyperbolic) Even if; even in the circumstances that.

      I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth.

      You're finishing your chowder if you sit there all afternoon!

      • 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], Oliver Twist; […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:

        “Wait a minute!” said the girl: “I wouldn’t hurry by, if it was you that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o’clock struck, Bill. I’d walk round and round the place till I dropped, if the snow was on the ground, and I hadn’t a shawl to cover me.”

      • 2004, David Lee Murphy and Kim Tribble (writers), Montgomery Gentry (singers), “If It’s The Last Thing I Do” (song), in You Do Your Thing (album):

        If it’s the last thing I do / If it takes me from Tubilo to Timbuktu / If it’s the last thing I do / I’m gonna dodge every road block, speed trap, county cop / To get my hands on you / If it’s the last thing I do.

3. Considering the fact that; given that; introducing a condition that is known to be true.

   The drain's blocked — and if the drain's blocked, the water won't flow.

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part I (books I–III), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza ii, page 66:

     O what of Gods then boots it to be borne, / If old Aveugles ſonnes ſo euill heare?

4. When; whenever; every time that.

   If you heat water to 100° C, it boils.

   If it rains, it pours.

5. Although; used to introduce a concession; may..but.

   He was a great friend, if a little stingy at the bar.

   She won her team's admiration, if not the award, for her performance.

   • 1981 April 11, Mitzel, “Kopacz Acquitted In Barbre Killing”, in Gay Community News, page 1:

     Both Spear & Davis were indicted in the witchhunt surrounding the sensational (if nonexistent) "Revere sex ring."

6. (literary) While; used to introduce a contrast.

   If tea is expensive, coffee is completely unaffordable.

   • 1957 March 7, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 3.3, in Pnin, Heinemann, page 66:

     If his Russian was music, his English was murder.

   • 2015, Phillips Payson O'Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II, page 8:

     If the outcome of the land war on the Eastern Front is usually seen as decisive, historical views on the importance of the air war are mixed.

   • 2015, Phillips Payson O'Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II, page 65:

     If the Russians out-produced the Japanese in individual units, the Japanese out-produced the USSR in terms of technological quality.

   • 2015, Phillips Payson O'Brien, How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II, page 103:

     If the Americans knew how they wanted to use strategic air power but not what to attack, the British had a huge number of plans about what to attack but almost no means to adequately deliver the necessary blow.

   • 2023, Serhii Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, page 17:

     If the Poles resisted imperial rule, the Ukrainians threatened the unity of the “reunified” Catherinian empire by claiming an identity distinct from the Russian.

   • 2023, Serhii Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, page 1970:

     If the collapse of the USSR was sudden and largely bloodless, growing strains between its two largest successors would develop into limited fighting in the Donbas in 2014 and then into all-out warfare in 2022, causing death, destruction, and a refugee crisis on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War.

   • 2023, Serhii Plokhy, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, page 1971:

     If the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and World War I spelled the end of the Porte as an imperial power, its former Balkan possessions were the scene of the Yugoslav wars of 1991–2001, which coincided with the disintegration of the USSR.

7. (sometimes proscribed) Whether; used to introduce a noun clause, an indirect question, that functions as the direct object of certain verbs.

   I don't know if I want to go or not.

   • 1715–1717, Matthew Prior, Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind, Canto III:

     Quoth Matthew, “ […] / She doubts if two and two make four, / […] ”

   • 1976, Michael Harrison, Beyond Baker Street: A Sherlockian Anthology, page 117:

     It is doubtful if the Victorian Londoner needed any warning, for the artful mobsmen, toolers, whizzers and dippers, together with their stickman accomplices, were everywhere in the crowds, in the underground, on railway trains […]

8. Introducing a relevance conditional; in case.

   I have leftover cake if you want some.

   If you want to go home, I have the car keys.

• Specifically a subordinating conjunction.
• Some usage critics recommend that if not be used to mean whether, since the distinction can remove ambiguity, as in the following example:

Tell me if you can see her. (If the addressee can see her, then they must let the speaker know)

Tell me whether you can see her. (The speaker wants to know which instance is true: either the addressee's ability or inability to see her)

• This distinction is further encouraged because, traditionally, if cannot always be used in place of whether. For instance, if the noun clause acts as the subject of the sentence or an object of a preposition, the word is usually whether. Examples:

We like to talk about whether classical music is better than jazz.

Whether you like today’s weather does not matter.

• Another difference between if and whether is with the use of or not.

The sentences I don't know whether or not I passed or I don't know whether I passed or not are both correct

The sentence I don't know if I passed or not is correct, but I don't know if or not I passed is incorrect

• eef (representing various accents)
• ifen, iffen, if'n (dialectal)

if (plural ifs)

1. (informal) An uncertainty, possibility, condition, doubt etc.

   The board can't approve this project; there are too many ifs.

   • 1709, Susannah Centlivre, The Busy Body, Act III, in John Bell (ed.), British Theater, J. Bell (1791), page 59,

     Sir Fran. Nay, but Chargy, if——— ¶ Miran. Nay, Gardy, no Ifs.——Have I refus'd three northern lords, two British peers, and half a score knights, to have put in your Ifs?

   • 1791 January, “Richardſon’s Chemical Principles of the Metallic Arts”, in The Monthly Review, R. Griffiths, page 176:

     Well might Bergman add, (in his Sciographia,), “if the compariſon that has been made, &c. be juſt.” The preſent writer makes no ifs about the matter, and has ſuperadded a little inaccuracy of his own, […]

   • 2013 April 9, Andrei Lankov, “Stay Cool. Call North Korea’s Bluff.”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 7 November 2025:

     Even if they managed to strike Japan, the United States or South Korea with nuclear weapons — a big if, given that they do not have a reliable delivery system — they could not save themselves from ultimate defeat.

• big if
• ifs and ans
• ifs and buts
• no ifs, ands, or buts
• small if

if (third-person singular simple present ifs, present participle iffing, simple past and past participle iffed)

1. (rare) To couch or express in terms of a conditional statement; to prevaricate rather than make a firm decision.
   • 1916 August 5, The Bendigo Independent, Victoria, page 2, column 5:

     Yet, even now, if only the bothering British Navy ———— but what is the use of "iffing" and "butting."

   • 1933 July 8, Smith's Weekly, Sydney, page 3, column 1:

     IT'S not a question of Ayes and Noes in politics. It's all Ifs. Everybody's iffing just now and if the professional political iffers only have their way there'll be some sensational developments at Canberra if and when the last If slips into the last hole in the political jig-saw.

   • 1963 October 12, The Bulletin, Sydney, page 44, column 2:

     Or, given a Petrucchio as a husband well, one could keep up the "iffing" indefinitely.

   • 2011, Peter Worley, The If Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in the Classroom, London: Bloomsbury Education, page 10:

     The method of iffing is a kind of hypothetical thinking, which asks us to imagine a situation that might not be the case in order to think about what it would mean to us.

• and
• else
• false
• or
• then
• true
• whether

• “if”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• FI, Fi, fi

Inherited from Middle French if, from Old French if, from northern Vulgar Latin *ivus (“yew tree”), from either Proto-Celtic *iwos or Proto-Germanic *īhwaz, both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. Cognate with Breton ivin, Welsh ywen, Old Irish eó (in Celtic), English yew, Dutch ijf, German Low German Iev, German Eibe (in Germanic), and further with Russian ива (iva) etc.

• IPA^(key): /if/

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• Audio (France (Somain)):

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if m (plural ifs)

1. yew
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[2], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères:

     Ce que l'on admirait surtout, c'étaient deux longs ifs couverts de lampions qui flanquaient une estrade où s'allaient tenir les autorités; […] .

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• “if”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Alternative spelling
IF

From English if (as in what if).

• IPA^(key): [iɸɯ̟]
• (Tokyo) イフ [íꜜfù] (Atamadaka – [1])^[1]

if(イフ) • (ifu) 

1. "what-if" alternative history (real-life) / events (fictional)

   Synonyms: もし (moshi), もしも (moshimo)

   IF(イフ)ルート

   ifu rūto

   a what-if scenario / storyline

   IF(イフ)ストーリー

   ifu sutōrī

   a what-if story

   歴(れき)史(し)のif(イフ)を想(そう)像(ぞう)する

   rekishi no ifu o sōzō suru

   to imagine a what-if in a history

• アナザー (anazā, literally “another”)

• yif, yef

From Old English ġif, from Proto-West Germanic *jabē, *jabu, from Proto-Germanic *jabai.

• IPA^(key): /if/, /jif/

if

1. if, on condition that

• English: if, yif
• Scots: gif, gyf, gin
• Yola: yith, if

• “if, conj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

From Old French if, from either Frankish *īw (from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz) or Gaulish *iwos (“yew, yew tree”) (from Proto-Celtic *iwos, compare Breton ivin, Old Irish eó, Welsh ywen); in either case from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See yew for more.

if m (plural ifs)

1. (Jersey) yew

From either Frankish *īw (from Proto-Germanic *īhwaz) or Gaulish *iwos (“yew, yew tree”) (from Proto-Celtic *iwos, compare Breton ivin, Old Irish eó, Welsh ywen); in either case from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyHw-. See yew for more.

if oblique singular, f (oblique plural is, nominative singular if, nominative plural is)

1. yew
2. yew wood

• Middle French: if
  • French: if
• Norman: if

Inherited from Proto-Berber. Cognate with Tashelhit af.

• IPA^(key): (Nador, Al Hoceima) [ɪf]
• Rhymes: -ɪf
• Syllabification: if

if (verbal noun tifet or tufit, Tifinagh spelling ⵉⴼ) (intransitive, stative)

1. to be better

• Serhoual (2002)
• Abarrou (2024)

Borrowed from English if.

if

1. if
   • 1932, Arie de Jong, Leerboek der Wereldtaal, page 19:

     If laboböv moni, remoböv ole buki at.

     If I had money, I would buy this book.

   • 1952, Arie de Jong, Diatek nulik: Gospul ma ‚Matthaeus’. Kapit: V:

     Binols sal taleda; ab if sal vedonöv nensmelik, me kin osalöfükoy üfo?

     You are salt for the earth. But if salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again?

if

1. alternative form of yith
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, page 52:

     Thou leeesth if thou wasth Saan Vinteen, an Saan Vinteen agyne.

     Thou liest if thou wast St. Finton, and St. Finton again.

   • 1867, “JAMEEN QOUGEELY EE-PEALTHE”, in SONGS, ETC. IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, page 110, lines 5-6:

     If ich hadh Peeougheen a Buch, Meyleare a Slut, Peedher Ghiel-laaune, an Jackeen Bugaaune,

     If I had Hugh the Buck, Meyler the Sloven, Peter the Smart Man, and John Boggan,

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 110

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=if&oldid=95438813"

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