item [LME] Originally item was used to introduce each new article or particular in a list or document. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Olivia mocks attempts to shower her with exaggerated praise: ‘[My beauty] shall be inventoried and every particle and utensil labelled to my will, as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.’ This use for ‘likewise, also’ reflects its source, Latin item ‘just so, similarly, moreover’. From there item started to refer to a statement or maxim of the type often introduced by the word ‘item’, then to an individual article or unit. A couple have been an item since around 1970, at first in the USA.