"Of," "with," "to," "in," "on" — these simple little words are vitally important for understanding sentences. Leave out "to" from a note explaining you're going to the store, and there will be some questions. But what about more colorful prepositions? What sort of meaning could be infused into sentences with a few of these rarer prepositions?
Thank Latin
A lot of rarely used prepositions come from Latin. Because they’re uncommon, it’s easy to think they’re too complicated to use in daily life. It’s just a case of linguistic evolution. Sometimes a word’s definition changes, or a meaning is dropped by the wayside.
For example, "apropos" started as a preposition and has evolved to be used as an adjective.
Apropos as preposition: With reference to.
Apropos as adjective: Appropriate to this situation.
Latin words like "apropos" aren’t necessarily archaic. For example, "versus" (against) appears all over the place, from video games to college football. More Latin prepositions that still pop up in everyday vocabulary include "inter," "post," "pro," and "super."
A Time and a Place for Prepositions
Prepositions indicate relation — or time, place, or position — and that hasn’t changed over the years. But many rare prepositions sound more fanciful than words found in modern conversation.
Here are a few once widely used prepositions, their meanings, and what they’ve become in our modern tongue.
Apropos
It means "with regard to," but people rarely say "apropos" in casual chats. We already know it can function as an adjective, but it’s also an adverb meaning “appropriately.” The phrase “apropos of nothing” has survived in modern language. It implies that the next statement isn't with regard to the previous topic.
Amongst
This is just a way of saying "among" with a few extra letters. They're both correct, but in modern English, fewer letters is preferable. Keep it in mind for Scrabble when you need to use up a few extra tiles.
Per
Passive-aggressive emails are keeping the preposition "per" alive. “Per my earlier email…” is the quickest way to let your colleague know that you’re waiting on their reply, and you needed it yesterday. It means "according to," and it’s not to be confused with its adverb form (where "per" means "each").
Re
"Re" comes from Latin, where the noun res means "thing." When it entered English around the 18th century, it meant "in reference to the thing." It's easy to assume "re" is an abbreviation of "referring" but it's actually just a preposition, not an abbreviation.
Via
"Via" is a much shorter way to say "by way of," but, for some reason, it's not used as much as that longer phrase.
Vis-a-vis
This Latin preposition literally means "face to face" and was once used to talk about opposites. It’s almost like "versus," but in a less competitive sense. It's a contrast, but not a fight.
Feature photo credit: Patrick Tomasso/ Unsplash