13

Could anyone give me some examples or rules for using ", of which"? I mean only ", of which", neither "which" nor ", xxx of which". Any idea is appreciated.

p.s. She discovered so many spiders, of which she was most afraid. - Cool Elf

Is it possible, that "of" is not an essential part of the verb in the relative clause?

Community
  • 1
macio.Jun
  • 311
  • 2
    Welcome, macio.Jun. I'm afraid questions where each answer is equally valid are considered not constructive. Perhaps you could edit your question to require a concrete answer. Please read the [faq] for more information. – Matt E. Эллен Aug 02 '12 at 11:21
  • Welcome to ELU, macio; you might be interested in reading this question: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73922/correct-usage-of-of-which –  Aug 02 '12 at 11:29
  • Thank you Matt, but I can't really find one meaningful usage for ", of which". Thank you Carlo_R, that thread only discusses the usage of ", xxx of which". – macio.Jun Aug 02 '12 at 11:37

1 Answers1

10

"Of which" is part of a relative clause.

"Which" is the relative pronoun and "of" is a preposition placed at the beginning of the relative clause, instead of at the end.

A few examples of this construction are:

  1. She discovered so many spiders, of which she was most afraid.

  2. He answered all the listening and reading exercises, of which the test mostly consisted.

  3. The team won a silver medal, of which they were very proud.

Note also that you can place "of" differently:

  1. She discovered so many spiders, which she was most afraid of.

  2. He answered all the listening and reading exercises, which the test mostly consisted of.

  3. The team won a silver medal, which they were very proud of.

Laurel
  • 66,382
Cool Elf
  • 9,834
  • Cool Elf, Thank you for your concrete explanation. But I am sure that I've seen some other cases, under which "of" is not an essential part of the verb in the conditoin sentence. – macio.Jun Aug 02 '12 at 13:35
  • the of which construction is often used to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. This long standing rule seems to be fading. – bib Aug 02 '12 at 13:42
  • Hi macio.Jun. How about "There were three books, of which the blue one was the thickest"? – Cool Elf Aug 02 '12 at 14:43
  • 1
    This is equivalent to "There were three books, the blue one of which was the thickest". – macio.Jun Aug 02 '12 at 15:11
  • @macio.Jun "There were three books, and the blue one of which was the thickest." – WIZARDELF May 30 '13 at 20:52
  • "The book, of which the pages were torn, was blue.". No way to place "of" somewhere else, right? – Gauthier Feb 10 '17 at 08:07