Of

Part of speech: preposition

Definitions

1. Showing ownership or association with something ; indicating a portion taken from a larger whole ; denoting a starting point or source ; relating to a topic or subject
2. Expressing possession or connection ; marking a piece or quantity within a larger total ; signaling origin or derivation ; pertaining to something being discussed
3. Indicating who or what something belongs to ; specifying a portion within a whole ; showing where something comes from ; regarding a matter or topic

Etymology: "Of" is one of the most frequent words in English, yet it began as a stressed word meaning "away." Its ancestor, Old English "æf," meant "away from" or "off," and "of" was simply the weakened, unstressed form of that same word. When the sentence stress fell elsewhere, the vowel shrank, and "of" gradually split off from its stressed sibling, which survives today as "off." The narrowing from "away from" to "belonging to" happened because "from" senses naturally slid toward "source" and then "possession." Expressions like "a man of Kent" (from Kent) and "the leg of the table" (the table's leg) show the same sense of separation turning into connection. The spelling "of" was also pronounced "ov" in the modern way, a pronunciation that gradually took hold, influenced by its stressed relative "off."