Question

Fill in the blanks with suitable prepositions:
They wanted to cut the cake _________midnight. But time was moving slow. It was ten ______twelve.
a) At, to
b) To, at
c) On, to
d) To, on

Answer 1

Hint: To answer the question, one must understand the proper usage of prepositions. It is important to know which one is used in what context.

Complete step-by-step answer:
Prepositions are words that dictate and express a relation of one word to another or of two elements in a clause. These are generally placed before nouns or pronouns. On, after, over, on, under are some prepositions. For example, “the bird on the tree”.
Now, any event takes place ‘at’, ‘before’, ‘after’ or ‘around’ midnight, so clearly the correct preposition in the given context is ‘at’. Then, the phrase is ‘ten to twelve’, meaning it was ten minutes before twelve o’clock, hence the correct preposition in this context is ‘to’. That is the correct order of prepositions
Option a, “at” and “to” are the correct prepositions, in the correct places for their context. It is the correct option.
Option b, “to” and “at” are wrong prepositions to be used in context, as discussed above, hence, option b is incorrect.
Option c, as discussed above, all the prepositions are incorrectly chosen and hence placed, hence it is an incorrect choice.
Option d, picks the first two preposition correctly but not the next one and misplaces both of them hence it is incorrect as well. Option a is the correct choice.

Note: Here, one must know the proper usage of prepositions in order to not confuse the last options. If one is not aware, one might end up choosing the wrong option.