Take my word for it or take my word for this? [closed]

Solution 1:

Yes, you are right that the original phrase is the one with it. And yes, your friend is right that you can use the variant with this as well. As is often the case with language, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

The actual usage stats from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus look as follows:

                              COCA    BNC

take my word for it/this     141/7   49/1
take his word for it/this     17/0    4/0
take her word for it/this     16/1    0/0
take your word for it/this    58/1   16/0
take our word for it/this     17/0    3/0
take their word for it/this   30/0    6/0

So the variant with this is not entirely unheard of, but the one with it is vastly preferred, for all determiners and on both sides of the pond.