Preposition Vocabulary

These pages are about the vocabulary of prepositions and contain wordlists and example sentences. (You can see the grammar of prepositions here.)

Common Prepositions
Short list of 70 one-word prepositions

Prepositions of Movement
Example sentences and illustrations

Prepositions of Time
Example sentences for some common prepositions of time - at, in, during

Prepositions of Place
Illustration and example sentences, with quiz, for some common prepositions of place

Prepositions List
Full list of 150 one-word and complex prepositions, with example sentences

Prepositions Vocabulary Quiz
Try this quiz online or print it on paper, and check your understanding of prepositions vocabulary.

About prepositions

There are more than 100 prepositions in English. Yet this is a very small number when you think of the thousands of other words (nouns, verbs etc). Prepositions are important words. We use individual prepositions more frequently than other individual words. In fact, the prepositions of, to and in are among the ten most frequent words in English.

The name "preposition" (pre + position) means "place before". Prepositions usually come before another word, usually a noun or noun phrase:

noun
pronoun
noun phrase
gerund (verb in -ing form)

If a preposition does not come before another word, it is still closely linked to another word:

Who did you talk to?
To whom did you talk?
I talked to Jane.