Dictionaries › English

of

Pronunciation: /ɒv/

The English word “of” has 20 meanings listed here.

preposition

  1. From (a place); off.
  2. Since, from (a given time, earlier state etc.).
  3. From, away from (a position, number, distance etc.).
  4. Indicating removal, absence or separation, with the action indicated by a transitive verb and the quality or substance by a grammatical object.
  5. Indicating removal, absence or separation, with resulting state indicated by an adjective.
  6. Indicating removal, absence or separation, construed with an intransitive verb.
  7. Indicating an ancestral source or origin of descent.
  8. Introducing an epithet that indicates a birthplace, residence, dominion, or other place associated with the individual.
  9. Indicating a (non-physical) source of action or emotion; introducing a cause, instigation; from, out of, as an expression of.
  10. Indicates the source or cause of the verb.
  11. Indicates the subject or cause of the adjective.
  12. Indicates the agent (for most verbs, now usually expressed with by).
  13. Used to introduce the “subjective genitive”; following a noun to form the head of a postmodifying noun phrase (see also ‘Possession’ senses below).
  14. Used to indicate the agent of something described by the adjective.
  15. Used to indicate the material or substance used.
  16. Used to indicate the material of the just-mentioned object.
  17. Indicating the composition of a given collective or quantitative noun.
  18. Used to link a given class of things with a specific example of that class.
  19. Links two nouns in near-apposition, with the first qualifying the second; “which is also”.
  20. Links an intransitive verb, or a transitive verb and its subject (especially verbs to do with thinking, feeling, expressing etc.), with its subject-matter; concerning, with regard to.

Etymology

From Middle English of, from Old English of (“from, out of, off”), an unstressed form of æf, from Proto-West Germanic *ab, from Proto-Germanic *ab (“away; away from”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó (“away”). Doublet of off, which is the stressed descendant of the same Old English word. More at off.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “of” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.