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Preposition   Listen
noun
Preposition  n.  
1.
(Gram.) A word employed to connect a noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word; a particle used with a noun or pronoun (in English always in the objective case) to make a phrase limiting some other word; so called because usually placed before the word with which it is phrased; as, a bridge of iron; he comes from town; it is good for food; he escaped by running.
2.
A proposition; an exposition; a discourse. (Obs.) "He made a long preposition and oration."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Preposition" Quotes from Famous Books



... genitive case, jong, is sometimes omitted for the sake of brevity, e.g. u ksew nga (my dog) for u ksew jong nga. The preposition la gives also the force of the possessive case, e.g. la ka jong ka jong (their own). There are some nouns which change their form, or rather are abbreviated when used in the vocative case, e.g. ko mei, not ko kmei Oh mother; ko pa, not ko kpa Oh father. These, however, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... secret of the Christian life. We need no other; at least, all other secrets are involved in this. If we attend to this little preposition "in," we have entry into the infinite. If we are "in Christ," we are in the kingdom of everything that endures, and we are ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... | mes | e|ra | de | ma|yo cuan|do | ha|ce | la | ca|lor. (p. 7, l. 1-2) page lv Hiatus was common in Old Spanish, except when the first of two words was the definite article, a personal pronoun-object or the preposition de; or when the vowels were ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... The preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him, and which I have but lately observed ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... that a verb should not agree with its subject in person and number, whereas the Good Book says that contention is worse than a dinner of herbs. You also tried to release the objective case from its thraldom to the preposition, and it is written that servants should obey their masters. ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... as being in the body as unequivocally as chairs can be in a room. Breath can be inhaled and exhaled; atoms can be in the head, or in the chest, or the heart, or anywhere else in the animal economy. There is nothing dubious about this sense of the preposition "in." ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... through the involved and inverted sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... it to have come in just this shape from the pen of Columbus. It looks as if it had been abridged from some diary of his by some person unfamiliar with the Arctic seas; and I have ventured to insert in brackets a little preposition which may perhaps help to straighten out the meaning. By Thule Columbus doubtless means Iceland, which lies between latitudes 64 deg. and 67 deg., and it looks as if he meant to say that he ran beyond it as far as the little island, just a ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... broken in on the worship, drawn to Jesus, he is no sooner in His presence than the other power that darkly lodged in him overpowers him, and pours out fierce passions from his reluctant lips. There is dreadful meaning in the preposition here used, 'a man in an unclean spirit,' as if his human self was immersed in that filthy flood. The words embody three thoughts—the fierce hatred, which disowns all connection with Jesus; the wild terror, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... by reason of His body. Now, in the Holy Ghost we may observe a twofold habitude to Christ. For to the Son of God Himself, who is said to have been conceived, He has a habitude of consubstantiality: while to His body He has the habitude of efficient cause. And this preposition of (de) signifies both habitudes: thus we say that a certain man is "of (de) his father." And therefore we can fittingly say that Christ was conceived of the Holy Ghost in such a way that the efficiency of the Holy Ghost be referred to the body assumed, and the consubstantiality ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... America is "different to." As a Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no guide to us; and that ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... she and Monty talked it over. The penitence of both was beautiful to behold. Each denied the other the privilege of assuming all the blame and both were so happy that Mohammed was little more than a preposition in their conversation so far as prominence was concerned. But all day long the harbor was full of fisher boats, and at nightfall they still were lolling about, sinister, restless, mysterious like purposeless buzzards. And the dark men on board were ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... Yet Samuel and Constance had not made friends; they had not, in the Five Towns phrase, 'branched out socially,' though they had very meetly branched out on subscription lists. They kept themselves to themselves (emphasizing the preposition). These guests were not their guests; they were the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... the propriety of his calling on Bunce and Palmer, at the Springs; and immediately getting his colleagues to meet them, and have the thing explained, and prevent improper use being made of their certificate; to which preposition he, after expressing his regret that it had become public, cordially acceded. I then parted with him on my way to New-York.—AMOS ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... the old riddle feels the sap stirring in its limbs again, and the amusing spilikin completes the mental ruin of the jaded guest. Then does the Jolly Maiden Aunt propound the query: What is the difference between an elephant and a silk hat? Or declare that her first is a vowel, her second a preposition, and her third an archipelago. It is to crown such a quiet evening, and to give the finishing stroke to those of the visitors who have not escaped early, with a fierce purpose of getting at the saloons before they have time to close, that the indoor game or family reservoir of fun is dragged ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... of his doctrine previous to his coming in his kingdom. We might reason this point at large, but deem it unnecessary till some one proves how those, who never heard of a Saviour, could be said to die in Christ, or to be dead in him. I would, however, remark that the Greek preposition en may be rendered, on account of. The phrase would then read thus—the dead on account of Christ. Wakefield renders it thus—"they who have died in the cause of Christ." That this is its true sense, I ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... regarded by English-speaking people as a precious birthright. Yet, there are increasing evidences of a tendency to discard this only remaining case-ending and to replace its powerful backbone with the comparatively limp and cartilaginous preposition. This tendency has not yet appeared so much in our spoken as in our written language, and even here only in the most formal parts of it. It is especially noticeable in the diction of the purely ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... requires the careful attention of those who desire to make themselves perfectly intelligible to all, irrespective of nationality, is the correct use of prepositions. In English the same preposition is often employed to express many diverse ideas, and it therefore becomes desirable to consider this ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various

... ondrdan. "In late texts the final n of the preposition on is frequently lost when it occurs in a compound word or stereotyped phrase, and the prefix then appears as a: abtan, amang, aweg, aright, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... shopkeepers are dressed in crimson and orange. Some of the grammatical illustrations are droll: a heavy old fellow, cross-legged, with his hands folded on a stick is myself; Punch is an active verb; a wedding might have illustrated the conjunction; four in hand is a preposition. In punctuation, a child asking what o'clock it is, illustrates a note of interrogation. We could have supplied the editor with the Colon: a little girl who had much difficulty in understanding its use, one day complained that a pain in her stomach was as bad as a colon. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various

... seen as well as Y and Z, it was impossible to translate the sentence which results,—[Greek: epi ges eirene anthropois eudokia]. Reference would have been made to any other copy of the third Gospel, and together with the omitted preposition ([Greek: en]) sense would have been restored to the passage. But unhappily one of the two supposed Copyists being a learned grammarian who had no other copy at hand to refer to, undertook, good man that he was, proprio Marte to force a meaning ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... A preposition governing the word modified by the genitive, precedes the genitive:[2] On ealdra manna sgenum, In old men's sayings; t :ra str:ta endum, At the ends of the streets (literally, At the streets' ends); For ealra nra hlgena lufan, For ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... simply tinamit, the city (not Patinamit, as writers usually give it, as pa is not an article but a preposition, in or at); and by the Aztec allies of the conqueror Alvarado, Quauhtemallan, "place of the wood-pile," for some reason unknown to us.[22-1] The latter designation was afterwards extended to the province, and under the corrupt form Guatemala is now the ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... near the church of S. Sebastiano was originally called in an indefinite way cimiterium ad catacumbas. The etymology of the name is uncertain. De Rossi suggests the roots cata, a Graeco-Latin preposition of the decadence, signifying "near," and cumba, a resting-place. The word would therefore mean apud accubitoria, "near the resting-places," an allusion to the many tombs which surrounded the old crypt above and below ground. This crypt dates from apostolic times, or, at all events, from a period ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... from Sandys' Christmas Carols, where it is printed from a broadside. The only alterations, in which I have followed Professor Child, are the obvious correction of 'east' for 'west' (8.1), and the insertion of one word in 16.2, where Child says 'perhaps a preposition has been dropped.' ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... of heredity to help the boy; and certainly he did dig the English grammar out of that blessed book, and the Spanish language with it, but after many long years, and much despair over the difference between a preposition ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... throwing back my head, and looking upward, as if trying to trace my last preposition among the clouds; "but—but—where could I have put a 'but'?—oh, I know! but you will most likely forget! Do not!" I continue, bringing down my eyes again, and speaking in a coaxing tone. "If you do, it will be play to you, but death to me; the thought of it ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... that which conceals: it is a fraud, and speaketh not the truth. I am not even certain whether it is a noun or a preposition, but the point is immaterial. Along with other canons of military matters, its virtue lies in its application rather than in its etymology. What the eye doth not see the trench mortars do not trouble is as true to-day as when Noah first mentioned the fact; and camouflage is the application ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... of Being; the Relational kind par excellence, as distinguished from the Qualitative kind; which last is denoted by the proper Adjectives. The Oblique Case of a Noun Substantive, whether formed by an Inflexion or by a Preposition, is therefore nothing else than a special kind of Adjective, destitute of the property of Comparison, because it denotes the Accident instead of the Quality of Being, and because Accidents or Relations between Things do not vary by ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... worse. There is one preposition, abs, which has now only an existence in account books; but in all other conversation of every sort is changed: for we say amovit, and abegit, and abstulit, so that you cannot now tell whether ab is the correct form or abs. What shall we say ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... speaker the author admits, that how to get a grip on his hearers outweighed the grammar of language; that the ring of sincerity and truth in presenting a proposition appealed to him more than relation of pronoun or preposition; besides in the "high school of hard knocks" from which he graduated artistic taste in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... herself backwards over the chair, and went rolling about the floor in an ecstasy of enjoyment. The king picked her up easier than one does a down quilt, and replaced her on her former relation to the chair. The exact preposition expressing this relation I do not happen ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... preposition signifying for, before, and forth; uni (Latin unus, one) signifies one or producing one; syn (sometimes syl and sym) signifies together; and sub (sometimes suf, sup, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... the Cross is regarded as being for man in a special and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that from the mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning and substitutionary character of the death of Christ, for the preposition here does not necessarily mean 'instead of,' but 'for the behoof of.' But admitting that, I have another question. If Christ's death is for 'the behoof of' men, in what conceivable sense does it benefit them, unless it is in the place of men? The death 'for me' is only for me when I understand ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... verb, or substantive proper; first person singular, face—' Miss Darner stopped a moment, and then went on with, 'Miss Jane Adair,—temper, syntax; consisting of concord and government; speech, a preposition; voice, liquids; face, mind, and figure, in the superlative degree; as the verb to be loved, second person singular, indicative mood, present tense, to myself and others. The remainder, excepting Miss Arden, ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown

... Great care must always be taken in rendering the preposition, {an}on (mostly of time); at, near, near by, by the side of; to (motion). ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel

... a combination of a present participle with a preposition used absolutely (not governing the following noun); the putting-in or ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition: it is the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas that compose any preposition. Belief is a passion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... both the explanatory comment and the syntax show that the object of this proposed concession was to secure the operation, the effectual working, of the bona fide intention expressly conceded to the American Government. The repetition of the preposition "of," before bona fide, secures this meaning beyond peradventure. Nevertheless Smith, in labored arraignment of the whole British course, wrote ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... efforts to be heard, and wished to be allowed to address the assembly as a member of the Council, and for that purpose resigned the Presidentship to Chasal. He begged that the General might be introduced again and heard with calmness. But this preposition was furiously opposed. Exclamations of "Outlaw Bonaparte! outlaw him!" rang through the assembly, and were the only reply given to the President. Lucien, who had reassumed the President's chair, left it a second time, that he might not be constrained to put the question ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... the place of a preposition in relation to man. She has been considered above him or below him, before him, behind him, beside him, a wholly relative existence—"Sydney's sister," "Pembroke's mother"—but never by any chance ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... German preposition auf was employed instead of an. A mistake which even an elementary knowledge of German should have made impossible. In the British Legation at Munich there was a German-British Consul—a Munich timber-merchant. If readers imagine that Munich was an unimportant city in the diplomatic sense, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... the shrug. The shrug requires special attention. The shrug is a gesture used by the Latin race for expressing a multitude of things, both objectively and subjectively. It is a language of itself. It is, as circumstances require, a noun, adverb, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition, interjection, conjunction. Yet it does not supersede the spoken language. It comes in rather when spoken words are useless, to convey intensity of meaning or delicacy. It is not taught, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... as a subordinate member of some assertion. We may notice, too, that the relative pronoun, unlike the rest, is necessarily syncategorematic, for the same reason as the subjunctive mood. Of the remaining parts of speech the article, adverb, preposition, and conjunction can never be anything but syncategorematic, while the interjection is acategorematic, like the vocative case of nouns and the imperative and optative moods of verbs, which do not enter at all into the form of sentence ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... so that to say, I work for you, the phrase is Nee eme pnauiden; and the mother to express, My son has failed me, (died), says, No ntzi mquideri; although in the place of this applicative the preposition betzguai, for, is used likewise, or de, by; as, Christ died for us, Cristo tamo ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith

... appeared in the same year with Swinburne's Bothwell, that magnificent study of the character of Mary Stuart. The characters in Mrs. Aitken's sketch are weak and thin, and the verse intolerable. She divides the most inseparable phrases to make out her measure, and constantly ends the lines with a preposition. No torturing of the voice can make verse of such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... that it does not belong to man to act for an end. For a cause is naturally first. But an end, in its very name, implies something that is last. Therefore an end is not a cause. But that for which a man acts, is the cause of his action; since this preposition "for" indicates a relation of causality. Therefore it does not belong to man to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... language as to be understood in most things belonging to eating and drinking, buying and selling, etc. My ear is somewhat familiarised to the Bengali sounds. It is a language of a very singular construction, having no plural except for pronouns, and not a single preposition in it: but the cases of nouns and pronouns are almost endless, all the words answering to our prepositions being put after the word, and forming a new case. Except these singularities, I find it an easy language. I feel myself happy in my present ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... or destruction (as in fordn, forgiefan), or is intensitive or pejorative, as in forbrnan, forrotian. It is not connected with the preposition 'for.' Its original form was fer- [cp. Ger. ver-]. II. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... [20] Verum enimvero; these conjunctions are intended strongly to draw the attention of the reader to the conclusion from a preceding argument. [21] 'Intent upon some occupation.' Intentus is commonly construed with the dative, or the preposition in or ad with the accusative; but as a person may be intent upon something, so he also may be intent by, or in consequence of, something, so that the ablative is ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... that the Middle Ages arose on the ruins of the Roman Empire. The decline of Rome preceded and in some ways prepared the rise of the kingdoms and cultures which composed the medieval system. Yet in spite of the self-evident truth of this historical preposition we know little about life and thought in the watershed years when Europe was ceasing to be Roman but was not yet medieval. We do not know how it felt to watch the decline of Rome; we do not even know whether the men who watched it knew what ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... long syllables, the final syllable being long by position. Pedantic grammarians might argue that natus being a participle ought not to govern a genitive case, but should be followed by a preposition with the ablative case, and that we ought to say "e Bacone nati" or "de Bacone nati." Other pedants have declared that natus is properly, i.e., classically, said of the mother only, although in low Latin, such as the Vulgate, we find 1 John v. 2, "Natos Dei," "born of God." But ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... royal authority were not all that he had to proclaim of Messiah. 'He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire.' We observe that the construction here is different from that in verse 16 ('with water'), inasmuch as the preposition 'in' is inserted, which, though it is often used 'instrumentaly,' is here, therefore, more probably to be taken as meaning simply 'in.' The two nouns are coupled under one preposition, which suggests that they are fused together ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... confinement of the soul, which otherwise, upon deserting its clayey tent, would immediately have been clothed with a spiritual body and have ascended to heaven. That is to say, Christ "was delivered because of our offences and was raised again because of our justification." In Romans viii. 10 the preposition occurs twice in exactly the same construction as in the text just quoted. In the latter case the authors of the common version have rendered it "because of." They should have done so in the other instance, in accordance with the natural force and established ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... is a planet whose orbit is inside the Earth's, the subject, 'Venus,' is a word used categorematically as a simple term; the predicate is a composite term whose constituent words (whether substantive, relative, verb, or preposition) are ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... "many" are the many evil-doers; and in Job xxxii. 9, the utterance: "Not the many are wise," is explained from the circumstance, that the view given by Job's friends was that of the great mass. The fact that the [Hebrew: at] in the second clause is not the sign of the Accusative, but a Preposition, [Pg 308] is probable even from the circumstance, that the former [Hebrew: at] commonly stands before qualified nouns only; and, farther from the corresponding; "with the transgressors." But what is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... Hakk la-hu Asl an 'and-na huna Rajil," a thoroughly popular phrase. "Min Hakk" and "min Hakkan," where in the adverbial meaning of Hakkan its grammatical form as an accusative is so far forgotten that it allows itself to be governed by the preposition "min," is rendered by Bocthor "tout de bon," "serieusement." "Asl" root has here the meaning of foundation in fact. The literal translation of the passage would therefore be: "Forsooth, is there any truth in it that a man ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the consummation of the work of sanctification. By transposing a few words in Heb. 12:14 we would have it read, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Holiness is here a noun objective to the preposition without. In some translations this sentence would read, "Without sanctification no man shall see the Lord." Sanctification is here a noun, the object of the preposition without. As nouns these words ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... whereto, herewith, etc. (cf. the Latin quocum, secum), but the longer forms were still, though rarely, transposed (see Shakes. Gr. 203); and in more recent writers this latter license is extremely rare. Even the use of the preposition after the relative, which was very common in Shakespeare's day, is now avoided, except in ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... that &c.': moreover is here used as a preposition, with the rest of the clause for ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald



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