"Are you going to eat BEFORE or AFTER the cinema?" These prepositions of time are some of the most common ones to refer to time. Follow the lesson below.
Prepositions of time are used to show when something happened. As we saw in the previous lesson, the three most common prepositions (“in”, “at”,“on”) can be used both as prepositions of place or time. Below are several other common prepositions of time.
Meaning: preceding, earlier than
Examples:
| Call me before one. |
| They arrived before me. |
Meaning: subsequent to in time
Examples:
| We will see you after the movie. |
| I arrived after them. |
Meaning: throughout the duration of or at a point in the course of
Examples:
| Don’t talk during the movie. |
| I don’t like to watch television during the day. |
Meaning: a function word used to indicate duration of time, how long something has happened
Use: Although the meaning of “for” is similar to “during”, in the sense of indicating a duration of time, “for” is used to express a period of time (hours, days, months, years, etc.) while “during” is used to express when something happened (within a period of time).
Examples:
| I lived in England for three years. |
| He studied for the exam for one week. |
Note: We will learn more about prepositions of time in later lessons on the various verb tenses.
