“What does that mean?” is mainly used as a response to a previous statement and can often stand alone. Usually followed by an infinitive phrase like “to be x,” “what does it mean?” is generally used as an opening remark for dialogs, especially when referring to word meanings and concepts. What is the difference between “what does it mean?” and “what does that mean?” So today, we’ll look into the context and meaning behind each of these two exploratory questions to fill the mentioned interesting gap.
However, people seem to get bothered as to when we should say “what does it mean?” instead of “what does that mean?” and vice versa. Some of the most commonly used pronouns are “it” and “that,” and both can be grammatically used in the question “what does x mean?”