The preposition too is a word expressing relationships, but this definition gives only a faint idea of its great resources. When the false rules about the preposition have been set aside, it is seen that this is a tremendously inventive word. Like the adverb, it is a free rover, standing almost anywhere; it is constantly entering into combinations with verbs and nouns, in which it may direct, qualify, intensify, or even add something quite new to the meaning; at other times it combines with some other preposition to produce an indispensable idiom. It has given us “get out,” “put over,” “come across,” “eat up,” “butt in,” “off of,” “in between,” and many other expressions without which English, especially on the vital colloquial level, would be poorer indeed. Thornton Wilder maintains that it is in this extremely free use of the preposition that modern American English shows its superiority over British English. Such bold use of prepositional combinations gives to American English a certain flavor of the grand style, which British English has not had since the seventeenth century. Melville, an author working peculiarly on his own, is characterized in style by this imaginative use of the preposition. Considered with reference to principle, the preposition seems to do what the adverb does, but to do it with a kind of substantive force. “Groundward,” for example, seems weak beside “toward the ground,” “lengthwise” beside “along the length of,” or “centrally” beside “in the center of.” The explanation may well lie in the preposition’s characteristic position; as a regular orderer of nouns and of verbs, it takes upon itself something of their solidity of meaning. “What is that for?” and “Where did you send it to?” lose none of their force through being terminated by these brief words of relationship. _The Phrase_ It will not be necessary to say much about the phrase because its possibilities have been fairly well covered by our discussion of the noun and adjective. One qualifying remark about the force of the prepositional phrase, however, deserves making. The strength normally found in the preposition can be greatly diminished by connection with an abstract noun. That is to say, when the terminus of the preposition is lacking in vigor or concreteness, the whole expression may succumb to vagueness, in which cases the single adjective or adverb will be stronger by comparison. Thus the idea conveyed by “lazy” is largely frustrated by “of a lazy disposition”; that of “mercenary” by “of a mercenary character”; that of “deep” by “of depth,” and so on.