[uhv, ov; unstressed uh
v or, especially before consonants, uh] 
| 1. | (used to indicate distance or direction from, separation, deprivation, etc.): within a mile of the church; south of Omaha; to be robbed of one's money. |
| 2. | (used to indicate derivation, origin, or source): a man of good family; the plays of Shakespeare; a piece of cake. |
| 3. | (used to indicate cause, motive, occasion, or reason): to die of hunger. |
| 4. | (used to indicate material, component parts, substance, or contents): a dress of silk; an apartment of three rooms; a book of poems; a package of cheese. |
| 5. | (used to indicate apposition or identity): Is that idiot of a salesman calling again? |
| 6. | (used to indicate specific identity or a particular item within a category): the city of Chicago; thoughts of love. |
| 7. | (used to indicate possession, connection, or association): the king of France; the property of the church. |
| 8. | (used to indicate inclusion in a number, class, or whole): one of us. |
| 9. | (used to indicate the objective relation, the object of the action noted by the preceding noun or the application of a verb or adjective): the ringing of bells; He writes her of home; I'm tired of working. |
| 10. | (used to indicate reference or respect): There is talk of peace. |
| 11. | (used to indicate qualities or attributes): an ambassador of remarkable tact. |
| 12. | (used to indicate a specified time): They arrived of an evening. |
| 13. | Chiefly Northern U.S. before the hour of; until: twenty minutes of five. |
| 14. | on the part of: It was very mean of you to laugh at me. |
| 15. | in respect to: fleet of foot. |
| 16. | set aside for or devoted to: a minute of prayer. |
| 17. | Archaic. by: consumed of worms. |
[uhv] | have: He should of asked me first. |
v] or [uh] in connected speech, inexperienced writers commonly confuse the two words, spelling have as of (I would of handed in my book report, but the dog ate it). Professional writers have been able to exploit this spelling deliberately, especially in fiction, to help represent the speech of the uneducated: If he could of went home, he would of. | var. of ob- (by assimilation) before f: offend. |
| a prefix meaning “toward,” “to,” “on,” “over,” “against,” orig. occurring in loanwords from Latin, but now used also, with the sense of “reversely,” “inversely,” to form Neo-Latin and English scientific terms: object; obligate; oblanceolate. |
| of (ŭv, ŏv; əv when unstressed) prep.
[Middle English, from Old English; see apo- in Indo-European roots.] Usage Note: Grammarians have sometimes objected to the so-called double genitive construction, as in a friend of my father's; a book of mine. But the construction has been used in English since the 14th century and serves a useful purpose. It can help sort out ambiguous phrases like Bob's photograph, which could refer either to a photograph of Bob (that is, revealing Bob's image) or to one in Bob's possession. A photograph of Bob's can only be a photo that Bob has in his possession, which may or may not show Bob's image. Moreover, in some sentences the double genitive offers the only way to express what is meant. There is no substitute for it in a sentence such as That's the only friend of yours that I've ever met, since sentences such as That's your only friend that I've ever met and That's your only friend, whom I've ever met are awkward or inaccurate. Our Living Language : Some speakers of vernacular English varieties, particularly in isolated or mountainous regions of the southern United States, use phrases such as of a night or of an evening in place of Standard English at night or in the evening, as in We'd go hunting of an evening. This of construction is used only when referring to a repeated action—where Standard English uses nights, evenings, and the like, as in We'd go hunting nights. It is not used for single actions, as in She returned at night. · Interestingly, these of and -s constructions are related. This -s construction, which dates back to the Old English period (c. 449-1100), does not signify a plurality but is similar to the so-called genitive suffix -s, which often indicates possession, as in the king's throne. Just as this example can also be phrased as the throne of the king, nights can be reformulated as of a night. This reformulation has been possible since the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500). Sometimes the original -s ending remains in the of construction, as in We'd walk to the store of evenings, but usually it is omitted. Using of with adverbial time phrases has not always been confined to vernacular speech, as is evidenced by its occurrence in sources from the Wycliffite Bible (1382) to Theodore Dreiser's 1911 novel Jennie Gerhardt: "There was a place out in one corner of the veranda where he liked to sit of a spring or summer evening." · Using such of constructions reflects a long-standing tendency for English speakers to eliminate the case endings that were once attached to nouns to indicate their role as subject, object, or possessor. Nowadays, word order and the use of prepositional phrases usually determine a noun or noun phrase's role. Despite the trend to replace genitive -s with of phrases, marking adverbial phrases of time with of is fading out of American vernacular usage, probably because one can form these phrases without -s, as in at night. See Note at Smith Island. |
| OF abbr.
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| out·field (out'fēld') n. Baseball
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| out·field·er (out'fēl'dər) n. Baseball Abbr. OF A player who defends left, center, or right field. |
OF
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