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Choosing the Right Preposition

Do you have an affinity for your best friend, or an affinity with her? Are you enamored of a colleague, enamored with him, or enamored by him? Are you bored of, with, or by a bad TV show? These are just a few of the situations when it’s hard to know which preposition to use. Here are some more:

dissimilar from/with

differ from/with

embarrassed by/of

dissociate from/with

It sure seems like grammar should have an answer for how to approach these questions. It doesn’t. They’re purely a matter of idiom—what sounds “natural.” Sometimes, if you look up the adjective or verb in the dictionary, you can find help on which preposition to use—either in the usage examples or in sublistings of the word. But that’s hit-or-miss. If you don’t know which preposition to use with any given verb or noun, crowdsourcing is as good an approach as any: ask friends or the internet which sounds best or is more common, then go with that.