Talk:of

What is the purpose of this article? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. An online or offline dictionary will have a far better definition of "of" than this article ever will, so it adds nothing (except translations -- whoop de do). GavinSinclair, 2004-07-08


 * This is not Wikipedia. This is Wiktionary. Wiktionary is a dictionary - not an encyclopedia. Thank you for your crystal-ball opinion anyway. &mdash; Hippietrail 05:56, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm once again skeptical of the pronunciation section. I don't believe I change the vowel under stress (so to speak) &mdash; it's a schwa in both cases. This seems pretty clearly subject to regional variation. We might also mention the tendency to drop the final consonant entirely (as documented in "o'clock" and other such). Given that I'm dialectally challenged here, I'd like to gather a consensus before editing the section, but an edit seems likely. -dmh 22:09, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've added some senses and related terms, but this is still pretty rough (you try defining the various sense of of without using of :-). There aren't that many really basic senses, and I feeling like I'm dancing around them instead of nailing them down. Nonetheless, I think it's better to call out more senses, particularly for the benefit of foreign speakers. Even in the Germanic and Romance languages, the various prepositions meaning things like to and from don't map cleanly to each other, and I generally take differing translations as indicating different senses. For example, of is usually van in Dutch, but in time expressions it's voor, so I've called out time expressions explicitly. -dmh 22:42, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Still wrestling with this beast. Here is a list of random usages from BNC and elsewhere. Part/whole relationships are clearly significant and probably central. Not all of these would require separate definitions. In particular, the countable/uncountable distinction shouldn't matter greatly.

Raw material has been moved to Talk:Of/Raw

6. (in expressions of time) Before.

"It's almost a quarter of four." So... I've never heard this one before. Is it regional? British? More details needed.--Xetxo 21:23, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * ‘Of’ is used in this sense in the brilliant Scottish film ‘Whisky Galore’(2016) - I don’t know about the earlier film adaption or original book though. It does seem to be a mainly American usage though, it’s by no means typical in Britain and may be regional. Overlordnat1 (talk) 10:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

7. Connects a jurisdiction to its name. "The city of Lawrence is located on the Kaw river." Doesn't "of" in this case refer to the City as belonging to the name Lawrence? Just as the sentence "The people of Lawrence are good" refers to the people as belonging to the name Lawrence... like, where the name it'self is an idea and things are attributed to the idea? I like the definition, it should stand on it's own, apart from the related definition, but I feel like the similarities should be pointed out somehow.

8. Incorrect usage: The (proudly working class) Rolling Stones popularized the inappropriate insertion of the preposition "of" with their song "Get off of my cloud". Inserting "of" where it is not needed in a sentence is considered an error made by uneducated English speakers, rather than foreign speakers of English. Example: "It is as arrogant of an assumption as it is naive." When it would be correct to say: "It is as arrogant an assumption as it is naive."


 * off of is very common in American English and is a well-established idiom in our dialect. There is a sense that off is only an adverb, not a preposition. —Stephen (Talk) 11:07, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Verb Form
Personally, I think the use of "of" as a verb e.g. "I would of gone" should be more strongly emphasized as incorrect. Is there a way to do that? 76.65.0.17 22:32, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it is merely a common misspelling, and that is what it says. We don’t want to get into proscribing usage, but limit ourselves to point out that something is a common misspelling, if that is appropriate, or in some cases where it is not, that it is commonly considered to be incorrect, offensive, or whatever. —Stephen 17:39, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't be placed in a "Verb" subsection, but as a note, if at all. Rodri316 (talk) 16:44, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's a misspelling so much as eye dialect, compare something like landlubber. The reason I say this is people in the North of England say instead of, which is why when transcribed into written language, it's spelt of not 've. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:01, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree. Eye dialect is intentional, something like woulda or cuppa – people know that's not part of the written standard language because it's not taught at school to write like this, and in fact discouraged. In contrast, would of is simply a mistake caused by the homophony of the reduced forms of have and of (namely /ə(v)/); it's more like a hypercorrection, because the wrong expansion is selected for the reduced form. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:26, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Audio "piece of cake"
It's of pronunced /əv/ in the audio since it's very devoiced in this context. --94.217.98.216 17:00, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Missing English sense?
I was looking for a place to include the usage NOUN of SAME NOUN, PLURALIZED - the calque from the Hebrew biblical structure found in the KJV (for instance) at This usage is also found in Jerry Bock's lyrics (written in English) for Fiddler on the Roof: Although as a form it was originally calqued from Hebrew originally, it clearly has English usage. I feel it should be included as a definition for "of" in English. Where would such usage fit best, and how should it be defined? Isaacmayer9 (talk) 00:49, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

RFC discussion: May 2017–May 2018

 * See Talk:minus.

All (*of) the students/contracts
According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English Some object to the inclusion of of in such phrases as all of the students and all of the contracts and prefer to omit it. What are the reasons behind such objection?

OED reads

OF: XII. Indicating a quality or other distinguishing mark by which a person or thing is characterized. (For OE. genitive; F. de; = genitive of quality or description.) b. qualified by all, indicating (temporary) condition: 1849 Thackeray Pendennis xvi, ‘Do you say so?’ Smirke said, all of a tremble

ALL: '''A. adj. II. absol.''' Followed by of: in sing. The entire amount, every part, the whole; in pl. Every individual, all the members or examples. (This const. is comparatively modern, and is probably due to form-assoc. with none of, some of, little of, much of, few of, many of.) Rare, exc. with pronouns, as all of it, of whom, of which, of them. Also, as much as, altogether, quite; for all of (cf. for prep. 26b) U.S., as far as concerns (a person or thing). [See pronominal examples under 2c.] --Backinstadiums (talk) 08:49, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
 * All of "Not more than": a conversation that took all of five minutes --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:07, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

"One of my friends" vs "a friend of mine"
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, page 717, reads One of my friends has been sacked two or three times in the last few months When expressing the possessive, is there any difference between these two structures in general?

Do both imply that the same friend got sacked each time? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:26, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * They both imply that, but this is more a consequence of common sense than of the grammar. Ƿidsiþ 05:28, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

beloved of the family
beloved of the family https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=of According to Wiktionary's definition, beloved here must be passive. Is that so? --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:25, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep. Ƿidsiþ 05:29, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * then very *(much) beloved of the family --Backinstadiums (talk) 07:58, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Upon
Archaic On: "A plague of all cowards, I say" (Shakespeare). https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=of --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:23, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

a cousin of his, a close friend of yours, a brother of Maria’s
How should the meaning of the pronouns here be specified? Also in -'s for a brother of Maria’s--Backinstadiums (talk) 11:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

There are exceptions—two of them
As always, there are exceptions—two of them. I take it here "of them" means something on the lines of "to be precise", similarly to "that makes two of us".

But what's the exact meaning of of here? https://oed.com/oed2/00162372 --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:23, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I would just read it as an ordinary sum-of-parts consturction .... after all I could just as easily say "many of them", but it would be awkward to say "many, to be precise". — Soap — 22:03, 18 July 2022 (UTC)