古英語のofから、原ゲルマン語*afから、PIE*apo, to leaveから、接頭辞ab-, apo-, apogeeと語源的には同じ。
英語の語源
of
of: [OE] Of has an ancient ancestry, going back to the prehistoric Indo-European preposition of ‘removal’ or ‘origin’, *ap. Its Germanic descendant was *ab, source of modern German ab (now only an adverb, meaning ‘away’), Dutch af, Swedish av, and English of. Latin ab ‘from’ (as in English abduct, abject, etc) also came from Indo-European *ap. => off
of (prep.)
Old English of, unstressed form of ?f (prep., adv.) "away, away from," from Proto-Germanic *af (cognates: Old Norse af, Old Frisian af, of "of," Dutch af "off, down," German ab "off, from, down"), from PIE *apo- "off, away" (see apo-). Primary sense in Old English still was "away," but shifted in Middle English with use of the word to translate Latin de, ex, and especially Old French de, which had come to be the substitute for the genitive case. "Of shares with another word of the same length, as, the evil glory of being accessory to more crimes against grammar than any other." [Fowler]
Also from 1837 a non-standard or dialectal representation of have as pronounced in unstressed positions (could of, must of, etc.)
例文
1. No matter where you go in life or how old you get,there 's always something new to learn about.After all,life is full of surprises.