In grammar, a preposition is a part of speech that introduces a prepositional phrase.

For example, in the sentence

"The cat sleeps on the sofa", the word "on" is a preposition, introducing the prepositional phrase "on the sofa". In
English, the most used prepositions are "of", "to", "in", "for", "with" and "on". Simply put, a preposition indicates a
relation between things mentioned in a sentence. Many style guides instruct that prepositions should not be placed at
the end of a sentence unless it is necessary to maintain sentence structure or avoid awkward phrasing. [1]

In many languages (e.g. Urdu, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese), the words that serve the role of prepositions come
after, not before, the dependent noun phrase. Such words are commonly called postpositions; similarly,
circumpositions consist of two parts that appear on both sides of the dependent noun phrase. The technical term
used to refer collectively to prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions is adposition. In more technical
language, an adposition is an element that, prototypically, combines syntactically with a phrase and indicates how
that phrase should be interpreted in the surrounding context. Some linguists use the word "preposition" instead of
"adposition" for all three cases.[2]

The following properties are characteristic of most adpositional systems.

 Adpositions are among the most frequently occurring words in languages that have them. For example, one
frequency ranking for English word forms[4] begins as follows (adpositions in bold):

the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, was, I, for, on, you, …

 The most common adpositions are single, monomorphemic words. According to the ranking cited above,
for example, the most common English prepositions are the following:

of, to, in, for, on, with, as, by, at, from, …
A prepositional phrase is made up of the preposition, its object and any associated adjectives or adverbs. A
prepositional phrase can function as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb. The most common prepositions are
"about," "above," "across," "after," "against," "along," "among," "around," "at," "before," "behind," "below,"
"beneath," "beside," "between," "beyond," "but," "by," "despite," "down," "during," "except," "for," "from," "in,"
"inside," "into," "like," "near," "of," "off," "on," "onto," "out," "outside," "over," "past," "since," "through,"
"throughout," "till," "to," "toward," "under," "underneath," "until," "up," "upon," "with," "within," and "without."

The set of adpositions overlaps with the set of subordinating conjunctions (or complementizers):

 (preposition) before/after/since the end of the summer

 (conjunction) before/after/since the summer ended
 (preposition) It looks like another rainy day
 (conjunction) It looks like it's going to rain again today

All of these words can be treated as prepositions if we extend the definition to allow clausal complements. This
treatment could be extended further to conjunctions that are never used as ordinary prepositions: unless they
surrender, although time is almost up, while you were on the phone Phrasal verbs in English are composed of a
verb and a "particle" that also looks like an intransitive preposition.

Simple adpositions consist of a single word, while complex adpositions consist of a group of words that act as one unit. Some
examples of complex prepositions in English are:

 in spite of, with respect to, except for, by dint of, next to . The boundary between simple and complex adpositions is
not clear-cut and for the most part arbitrary. Many simple adpositions are derived from complex forms (e.g. with + in
→ within, by + side → beside) through grammaticalization. This change takes time, and during the
transitional stages the adposition acts in some ways like a single word, and in other ways like a multi-word
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