This week I have a meeting middle about what to call it when you use multiple prepositions

in a row, and a tidbit about the phrase, dilly-dilly.

We'll start with the prepositions piece by guest writer Marsha Riefer-Johnston.

A listener named Morgan wrote in with a question about prepositions.

In the novel Canary Row, Steinbeck writes, quote, silver rivers of fish pour in out of the

boats, unquote.

Morgan asks, how can we have in-out of three prepositions strung together in a row?

The trick to answering this question is to reframe the question.

What if we aren't looking at three prepositions in a row in this case?

Then you can ask, what kind of words are in out and of in Steinbeck's sentence.

Although people often think of in-out and of as prepositions, you can't tell whether

a word is a preposition or any other kind of word just by looking at it.

To classify a word, it helps to know its grammatical role.

It's function in relationship to other words around it, and even then experts sometimes

disagree.

Let's start with a simple example.

Consider the word dog.

It morphs from noun to adjective to verb as you go from petting a dog to buying dog food

to dogging it.

So what kinds of words are in out and of in the phrase pour in out of the boats?

We could say that in is a verb particle and out of is a two word preposition.

How so?

...