This list of prepositions will help you understand what a preposition is. Let's start by having you check out the preposition song. Here's a picture with the lyrics as well as a video of me singing it for you. You'll also find a long list of prepositions below the video. Have fun!
above, across, after, at, around, before, behind,
below, beside, between, by, down, during, for, from,
in, inside, onto, of, off, on, out, through,
to, under, up, with
And that's the preposition song!
This list contains one-word, two-word, and three-word prepositions. Sometimes, words act together to form one preposition.
A
aboard, about, above, across, after, against, ahead of, along, amid,
amidst, among, around, as, as far as, as of, aside from, at, athwart,
atop
B barring, because of, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, by means of
C circa, concerning
Quick Refresher
Prepositions are words that show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and some other word or element in the rest of the sentence.
D despite, down, during
E except, except for, excluding
F far from, following, for, from
I
in, in accordance with, in addition to, in case of, in front of, in
lieu of, in place of, in spite of, including, inside, instead of, into
L like
M minus
N near, next to, notwithstanding
O of, off, on, on account of, on behalf of, on top of, onto, opposite, out, out of, outside, over
P past, plus, prior to
R regarding, regardless of
S save, since
T than, through, throughout, till, to, toward, towards
U under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon
V versus, via
W with, with regard to, within, without
Seeing a list of prepositions is great, but you also need to understand what prepositions are.
Prepositions are words that show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and some other word in the sentence. They are ALWAYS found in prepositional phrases.
Here are some examples of prepositional phrases.
at the movie
up the tree
around the block
Notice that all three of these prepositional phrases begin with a preposition (at, up, around) and end with a noun (movie, tree, block).
Let's look at some sentence diagrams of prepositions and prepositional phrases.
Sentence diagrams show us how all of the parts of a sentence are related. If you're a visual person, diagramming is the best way to learn grammar.
Here's a diagram of a sentence with two prepositional phrases.
The cake with nuts fell onto the floor.
With nuts starts with the preposition with and ends with the noun nuts.
Onto the floor starts with the preposition onto and ends with the noun floor.
Aren't sentence diagrams cool? You can learn how to diagram prepositions and prepositional phrases here.
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