What is the reason for var $this = this

Question

I\'m not the best at jquery and I came across a var initialization that I don\'t know why the person who wrote the code did it this way.

In the init for a plugin, we

Answer 1

It means nothing in this case (no pun intended). It would be more logical if the statement was var $this = $(this) since that would allow for all the nice jQuery functionality to be used.