Talk:List of English prepositions

Gerunds

I believe that "-ing" words, such as "baring", are not prepositions, but instead the gerund form of verbs (e.g. to bar). These should be removed from a list of prepositions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jtkinnyc (talk • contribs) 04:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

There are several valid prepositions in the English language that end in "ing". For example, there is "concerning", as in "Concerning your recent question, there are exceptions to your proposed rule." The phrase "Concerning your recent question" is an adverbial prepositional phrase, and it modifies the entire sentence, just like some other ones do. 98.81.4.38 (talk) 20:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

The construction discussed above is neither gerund nor preposition; it is a participial phrase. "Concerning" is the present participle of "concern." See http://mongryl.com/grammarshed/participial.phrases.html for more examples. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.22.14.40 (talk) 07:40, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Loan Words

I would have to say that 'versus', 'circa' and most of the rest of their fellow loaners do not fit the descriptors 'archaic' or 'infrequently used'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.21.157.2 (talk) 02:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

"With Respect To"

Now perhaps this is just some quirk that I've somehow acquired, but it seems to me "with respect to" is a multi-part preposition just like "with regards to." I've added it, but if I'm being dialectical feel free to remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.235.90.55 (talk) 13:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Justification for this page's existence

Yes, I know that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. However, this is not a dicdef, and there's precedent for pages like this (e.g. -onym).

On the other hand, this is rather on the dictionary side, so I'm not opposed to eventual transwikification. But before you shout "transwiki and delete!", please ensure that there is a place for this on the Wiktionary where it won't languish in obscurity. A list of prepositions is useful tool, and therefore it should exist on the Wiki project in some form. There is such an animal at wikt:Wiktionary:By part of speech, but it's woefully inadequate, containing exactly two prepositions!

See wikt:Category:English_prepositions--BrettR 13:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

At the very least, if this article is eventually transwikied (which I think is for the best), do not delete this article. Rather, create a soft redirect. While you're at it, the -onym article and its ilk should be moved, too. Thanks, • Benc • 05:30, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Keep!! Keep keep keep!!! This page is important because English has a closed class of prepositions, and it is encyclopedic to document them. This is not a dictionary definition, this is a list of the prepositions in English. eigenlambda 15:29, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Possible reorganization

Instead of organizing alphabetically by number of words, it might be more useful to organize this list by function. E.g., attributive, locative, temporal, etc. Only problem is that some prepositions overlap. • Benc • 05:30, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

List of English adpositions?

Isn't it good to rename this article to "List of English adpositions"? At least notwithstanding can be used as a postposition.

"The minister insisted the creek still suffered serious silt problems, heavy rain notwithstanding." - taken from The Australian - All in for fudged dredge grudge match.

- TAKASUGI Shinji 03:18, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd leave it under its present title, since prepositions are far more common in English. On a somewhat different subject, why does the current version say that "ago" is usually considered an adverb, but doesn't say anything about "notwithstanding"? For most purposes, the distinction between prepositions and adverbs is spurious anyway; one could conceivably refer to all prepositions and postpositons as adverbs (namely a special class of adverb which happens to require an argument, whereas most adverbs don't). --MarkSweep 03:46, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me ago, away, and similar words are adverbs rather than postpositions.

	intensifier	adverb	reference point
His house was built	very	quickly	for a traditional-style house.
His house was built	much	faster	than hers.
His house was built	far	away	from here.
His house was built	long	ago	(before now).

They have very similar structures. Ago cannot have an explicit reference point because it contains before now. You can use either ago or before now, but not both. In addition, ago must have an intensifier because pastness is expressed by verb tense, and using only ago is grammatically redundant.

I have found the following messages (only Google caches are available):

• Q: Postpositions in English?
• ago

Anyway, I agree with you that we should keep the current article title because English has few postpositions. Probably notwithstanding is the only postposition in English, but it is often used prepositionally. The postpositional notwithstanding is not an adverb, because its preceding phrase means a reason, not a degree of notwithstanding-ness. - TAKASUGI Shinji 02:11, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I looked these issues up in Huddleston and Pullum's Cambridge Grammar of the English language. They also use the term "preposition" universally to refer to all kinds of adpositions, saying in essence that the term "preposition" can be used to refer to adpositions generically. Second, they also count "ago" and similar items as postpositions because they take obligatory arguments: one cannot say "His house was built ago" (as opposed to "His house was built before now"); rather "ago" must take an argument as in "His house was built five years ago". I've also added some further postpositions to the article; coming to think of it, there may well be others. --MarkSweep 05:06, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Why numbered lists?

Before I change it — is there a reason for using numbered lists here? It seems to be that bullets would be more natural. Ruakh 14:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. | Did exactly that. Toxide (talk) 11:38, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Dispute of headings

What's with the "preposition-like modifiers of quantified noun phrases"? Why not put "apart from" under 2-word prepositions and but, except, plus, and save under single-word prepositions? Most dictionaries would list these words as prepositions, not "preposition-like modifiers". And note that minus is listed as a preposition here.--Mbenoit 12:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Worth

When is the word "worth" used as a preposition? Thanks! Soliloquial (talk) 04:24, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia ain't worth crap. Is that a preposition? LOL--71.97.132.221 (talk) 04:17, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

"Worth" is a preposition. From worth, Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), Random House, Retrieved May 18, 2008:

–preposition

1. good or important enough to justify (what is specified): advice worth taking; a place worth visiting.
2. having a value of, or equal in value to, as in money: This vase is worth 12 dollars.
3. having property to the value or amount of: They are worth millions.

- TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 10:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Possible Additions

There must be a lot of prepositions not on this list. They might be a closed class, but the class isn't that small, is it? Word-a-Day site listing "pace", "ere", "maugre", "chez"; Geoff Pullum on Language Log discussing "outwith". Quoting Pullum from that post: "The prepositions of English are not by any means a small, fixed set." This is the same Pullum cited earlier on this talk page. I'm not saying it isn't encyclopedic, just that the task of documenting English prepositions is not a small one, and should be approached with some humility. Tfkw (talk) 18:09, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I just want to make a point here. I did a quick Google search using 'site:dictionary.reference.com preposition', and looked at the first 250 hits. There were some two word phrases that I didn't double-check. Sticking to single words, there were some uncommon words not on this page: abaft, aff, apast, contra, de, fore, sur, vice. There were also some normal ones: absent, lacking, saving, touching, wanting. Also, are you absolutely positive that disregarding alternate spelling is the right choice: thru, o', amidst/midst, amongst, in re? Then there are ones that lawyers forget that normal people don't use: cy pres/cypres (this last list is probably really long, but you've got a bunch already). Sorry to be a nitpicker. I'm coming to this late, so, absent clear standards for which words go in and which stay out, I'm not going to edit the page.

Tfkw (talk) 18:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

A word not commonly recognized as a preposition is 'a', as in "I paid five dollars a day for that flop space." (cf. Merriam-Webster). "chez" is good, though it's frequently misused in English--it means "at the house of", but is usually used to mean "the house of".

Womzilla (talk) 18:06, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

"Grammaticalised" ?

Neither the word "grammaticalised" nor "grammaticalized" is found in any common dictionaries. Besides the question of "What on Earth could this'word' mean?", there is the fact the the Wikipedia is a reference sourch that is written for the general reader, and that for subjects like this one, it should not use any obscure words.
On the other hand, in highly-technical and specialized articles, words and phrases like "gallium arsenide field-effect transistor" must be used, but then, a significant part of the article needs to be spent telling what it does mean. 98.81.4.38 (talk) 20:34, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

"Ago" and "away"

Contrary to the article's assertion, these words are most definitely adverbs in that they modify other adverbial expressions (in the article, one of time and one of place). It is not in any way "wrong" to classify them as such. I believe the article needs to be corrected to reflect this fact. Vmedlock (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)vmedlock 2/14/10

References

Prefix a(-)

I would presume that the incorporation until now of "a" in the list is a reference to the "a" of, say, "a-hunting we will go", "she lay a dying", etc. Although ultimately derived from "on", this word, where it still used at all in Modern English, is more properly classified as a prefix than as a preposition. Unlike all the other, true prepositions in the list it cannot, for example, be used before "the". It is more akin to the "a(-)" of such words as "aglow". Moreover, the note (see "an" for usage in front of vowels) is surely a reference to "a/an", the indefinite article; as far as I am aware the prefix "a" is used indifferently before both consonants and vowels: e.g. "all a-eating and a-drinking". -- Picapica (talk) 08:26, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

No, "a" is a preposition roughly synonymous with "per"--e.g., "Trying to make a living on a dollar a day". Womzilla (talk) 16:25, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

"As"

Is "as" a preposition? It seems like one to me, but I have heard that it is questionable whether it may be technically considered one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.243.101 (talk) 00:18, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion

The criteria for inclusion in this list seem unclear. For example:

• why is "an" included but not "the"?
• why is "following" included but not "preceding"?
• why is "subsequent to" included but not "faster than" or "in a more disgusting fashion than"?
• why is "times" included but not "divided by"?

--Ehrenkater (talk) 14:52, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

"For the sake of"

I noticed that the OED has an entry for "for the sake of", listed as a preposition and conjunction. Should there be something mentioned here about such cases, if nothing else, to explain why they are not included? TomS TDotO (talk) 18:15, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

In A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Quirk, Greenbau, Leech & Svartik, section 9.11 there is a longer list of three-word prepositions. It notes that "The most numerous category is the type ... Prep1 + Noun + Prep2" and also "With three-word sequences we also include complex prepositions where the noun is preceeded by a definite or indefinite article" as in in the light of or as a result of. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:53, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The results of further reading: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston and Pullum and others, chapter 7, section 7.1, treats "Expressions of the type for the sake of X, at odds with X. After a list of examples, they note that "These differ in two respects from free expressions such as: She put it [on the photo of her son]." (1) the meaning is not systematically derivable from the components (2) they do not allow all ordinary syntactic changes in the components. I think that some reworking of our section on three-word prepositions could use some changes in the light of these observations (which I intend to do when I get around to it). TomS TDotO (talk) 16:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

our

'our' is not a preposition. If you disagree, please explain. TomS TDotO (talk) 08:13, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

lest

Removed lest, which as far as I can tell is always classified as a conjunction. neatnate (talk) 02:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Useless Sections

I noticed some of the sections are useless in the way they are organized. For example, the "multiple words" sections should not be presented as an inclusive list. The English language allows for these to be expansive; allowing words to be used that would otherwise not be considered prepositions in English. Putting almost any word in front of "to," "of," "by," etc. makes the utterance a "multiple word preposition," making compiling an exhaustive list nearly impossible. Instead of having a list maybe we should add the formula and a few common examples. If anyone objects please say so and explain why. Bstoopmarine (talk) 18:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

whence

looks to be missing Mayumashu (talk) 17:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Because

The Language Log considers because a preposition. Read article here. Tl;dr is that while most dictionaries consider it a conjunction, it doesn't act like a conjunction, but does act like a preposition. The argument is easily seen in the table in the article. I'm not adding it to the list, though, lest I be shunned. Brooksmith's (talk) 06:06, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Rehaul article

I don't want to revert this recent major revision. Someone put a lot of work on it. It is obviously a "good faith" effort. But I don't understand the point of all that work. Are we going to accept any change just because someone puts a lot of work on it? IMHO, it would be better to start with a discussion on these talk pages about there being some improvements needing a lot of work, and after there were people agreeing that those improvements were worthwhile, then going on with the work. As things stand, someone is going to revert these changes, and there will be ill will generated. I'm starting with a discussion on these pages, and I hope that the editor will notice this and explain the improvements that these changes make. I hope that the editor does not ignore the chance to discuss. I hope that someone will not have to get that editor's attention by reverting the changes. Or maybe some "third party" will tell me that I'm mistaken. Let's discuss, first. TomS TDotO (talk) 12:36, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Song?

The song on this is so nifty, and I don't want to remove it because it seems novel and interesting.

However, it's totally out of the tone for this page :/

Song to remember the prepositions

(Sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle)

About Above Across Against Among Around At After Before Beside Behind Between Beyond By Down During Into For From In Except Near Of Off To Over Past Throughout Through Towards On Up Without Until With Under

Should it be removed? Normally I'd just cut it but this seems nice. - - mathmitch7 ^{(talk/contribs)} 00:50, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Is this meant to be a comprehensive list?

Title 2600:1007:B02B:9BA1:59E4:F736:D317:F3FF (talk) 16:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)