What is the meaning of "it" in the following sentences?
Our car broke down on the road, but as luck would have it,
there was a garage nearby.I arrived a little late and, as luck would have it, the last
ticket had just been sold.
(Source: Merriam-Webster dictionary)
Does sentence 1 mean "Our car broke down on the road, but that our car broke down on the road would have as luck, there was a garage nearby" ?
Does sentence 2 mean "I arrived a little late and, that I arrived a little late would have as luck, the last ticket had just been sold" ?
Does it in sentence 1 mean "Our car broke down on the road" ?
Does it in sentence 2 mean "I arrived a little late"?
Is "as luck would have it" the inversion of "it would have as luck" ?
Best Answer
As luck would have it, in the Merriam-Webster entry referenced, is an idiom:
Idioms are set phrases, whose components are often not completely analyzable. (They may have a meaning that is based on their entirety rather than the sum of their parts.)
If it were to be analyzed, it would likely be an elided version of the following:
I would further say that it acts as a dummy pronoun in the same sense that it does in it is raining. The use of it isn't referring to something specific, but is merely acting to preserve the grammatical integrity of the sentence.
In short, it is a pronoun that doesn't point to anything in particular; it's simply there for the syntax of the sentence.