prepositions

Noun

preposition (plural prepositions)

1. (strict-sense) Any of a class of non-inflecting words and multiword terms typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense, with some other word: a particle used with a noun or pronoun (in English always in the objective case) to make a phrase limiting some other word.
   • 322. The parts of speech which are neither declined nor conjugated, are called by the general name of particles. 323. They are adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.1844, E. A. Andrews, First Lessions in Latin; or Introduction to Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar, 6th edition, Boston, page 91
2. (broadly) An adposition.
3. (obsolete) A proposition; an exposition; a discourse.
   • […] he made a longe preposicion & oracion cōcernynge yͤ allegiaūce which he exortyd his lordes to owe1811 [1516], Robert Fabyan, edited by Sir Henry Ellis, The New Chronicles of England and France, page 116