A preposition is the little word — such as "in", "near", "under", "at", or "from" — that precedes a noun or noun phrase and forms a prepositional phrase. They are often small words that tell you where or how something is.
In the sentence "The car went careening into the ditch," the preposition is "into": it's the word that tells you where the action is taking place. "We love to chase kids around the carnival in our scary clown costumes" has two prepositions, "around" and "in". They tell you where things are happening. The most common prepositions are "of, to, in, for, on, with, as, by, at, from." They are also the type of word you should really avoid ending a sentence with.
1 |
n |
a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word
|
2 |
n |
(linguistics) the placing of one linguistic element before another (as placing a modifier before the word it modifies in a sentence or placing an affix before the base to which it is attached)
|
