What is a preposition?

Prepositions are words we use to show the relationship between two things or people.

An important thing to remember about prepositions is that they must always be followed by a noun. They can never be followed by a verb.

In the video, we take a look some simple prepositions: ‘on’, ‘behind’, ‘in front of’ and ‘between’.

Simple prepositions include words like ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘between’ and ‘after’. Simple prepositions are often used to show how things relate to each other in location and time.

Examples of prepositions showing location (or place):

The cheese is in the fridge.

The cat is on the mat.

The chair is under the table.

I walked through the park.

Example of prepositions showing time:

Wednesday is after Tuesday

I will eat lunch at 1pm.

The teacher left the classroom before the students.

Prepositions can contain more than one word. For example; ‘in front of’, ‘in the middle of’ and ‘apart from’ are prepositions.

We call these kinds of prepositions compound prepositions or complex prepositions.

Examples of compound prepositions in sentences:

The table is in front of the TV. 

The car is in the middle of the street.

There is nobody in the room apart from me.

Prepositions are what we call a ‘part of speech’, that is they are a category – or type – of word.

A word is categorised as a particular ‘part of speech’ according to what it’s purpose is – what we use it for.

As we said before, prepositions are words we use to describe the relationship between things, people and ideas.

Other parts of speech include ‘verbs’, ‘nouns’, and ‘adjectives’.