prep.
- Derived or coming from; originating at or from: customs of the South.
- Caused by; resulting from: a death of tuberculosis.
- Away from; at a distance from: a mile east of here.
- So as to be separated or relieved from: robbed of one's dignity; cured of distemper.
- From the total or group comprising: give of one's time; two of my friends; most of the cases.
- Composed or made from: a dress of silk.
- Associated with or adhering to: people of your religion.
- Belonging or connected to: the rungs of a ladder.
- Possessing; having: a person of honor.
- On one's part: very nice of you.
- Containing or carrying: a basket of groceries.
- Specified as; named or called: a depth of ten feet; the Garden of Eden.
- Centering on; directed toward: a love of horses.
- Produced by; issuing from: products of the vine.
- Characterized or identified by: a year of famine.
- With reference to; about: think highly of her proposals; will speak of it later.
- In respect to: slow of speech.
- Set aside for; taken up by: a day of rest.
- Before; until: five minutes of two.
- During or on a specified time: of recent years.
- By: beloved of the family.
- Used to indicate an appositive: that idiot of a driver.
- Archaic. On: "A plague of all cowards, I say" (Shakespeare).
[Middle English, from Old English.]
USAGE NOTE Grammarians have sometimes objected to the so-called double genitive construction, as in a friend of my father's; a book of mine. But the construction has been used in English since the 14th century and serves a useful purpose. It can help sort out ambiguous phrases like Bob's photograph, which could refer either to a photograph of Bob (that is, revealing Bob's image) or to one in Bob's possession. A photograph of Bob's can only be a photo that Bob has in his possession, which may or may not show Bob's image. Moreover, in some sentences the double genitive offers the only way to express what is meant. There is no substitute for it in a sentence such as That's the only friend of yours that I've ever met, since sentences such as That's your only friend that I've ever met and That's your only friend, whom I've ever met are awkward or inaccurate.
Our Living Language Some speakers of vernacular English varieties, particularly in isolated or mountainous regions of the southern United States, use phrases such as of a night or of an evening in place of Standard English at night or in the evening, as in We'd go hunting of an evening. This of construction is used only when referring to a repeated action-where Standard English uses nights, evenings, and the like, as in We'd go hunting nights. It is not used for single actions, as in She returned at night. • Interestingly, these of and -s constructions are related. This -s construction, which dates back to the Old English period (c. 449-1100), does not signify a plurality but is similar to the so-called genitive suffix -s, which often indicates possession, as in the king's throne. Just as this example can also be phrased as the throne of the king, nights can be reformulated as of a night. This reformulation has been possible since the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500). Sometimes the original -s ending remains in the of construction, as in We'd walk to the store of evenings, but usually it is omitted. Using of with adverbial time phrases has not always been confined to vernacular speech, as is evidenced by its occurrence in sources from the Wycliffite Bible (1382) to Theodore Dreiser's 1911 novel Jennie Gerhardt: "There was a place out in one corner of the veranda where he liked to sit of a spring or summer evening." • Using such of constructions reflects a long-standing tendency for English speakers to eliminate the case endings that were once attached to nouns to indicate their role as subject, object, or possessor. Nowadays, word order and the use of prepositional phrases usually determine a noun or noun phrase's role. Despite the trend to replace genitive -s with of phrases, marking adverbial phrases of time with of is fading out of American vernacular usage, probably because one can form these phrases without -s, as in at night. See Note at Smith Island.
