of
Pronunciation: /ɒv/
The English word “of” has 20 meanings listed here.
preposition
- From (a place); off.
- Since, from (a given time, earlier state etc.).
- From, away from (a position, number, distance etc.).
- Indicating removal, absence or separation, with the action indicated by a transitive verb and the quality or substance by a grammatical object.
- Indicating removal, absence or separation, with resulting state indicated by an adjective.
- Indicating removal, absence or separation, construed with an intransitive verb.
- Indicating an ancestral source or origin of descent.
- Introducing an epithet that indicates a birthplace, residence, dominion, or other place associated with the individual.
- Indicating a (non-physical) source of action or emotion; introducing a cause, instigation; from, out of, as an expression of.
- Indicates the source or cause of the verb.
- Indicates the subject or cause of the adjective.
- Indicates the agent (for most verbs, now usually expressed with by).
- Used to introduce the “subjective genitive”; following a noun to form the head of a postmodifying noun phrase (see also ‘Possession’ senses below).
- Used to indicate the agent of something described by the adjective.
- Used to indicate the material or substance used.
- Used to indicate the material of the just-mentioned object.
- Indicating the composition of a given collective or quantitative noun.
- Used to link a given class of things with a specific example of that class.
- Links two nouns in near-apposition, with the first qualifying the second; “which is also”.
- 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.
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.