in
Definitions
General English
- preposition used for showing place
- preposition at home, in an office, at a station
- preposition used for showing time in the future
- preposition used for showing a state or appearance
Agriculture
- prefix (written as in-)used to refer to a pregnant female animal
Cricket
- adverb in or into the position of being the batsman or batting sideCitation ‘The Party that wins the toss-up, may order which Side shall go in first, at his Option’ (Laws 1744)Citation ‘With the score at 57–3, I went in ahead of Gatting, hoping to steady the innings for a while’ (Brearley 1982)Citation ‘A cricketer need only look at his scores and references to see how often the out side … has prevented the in side from getting the runs required’ (Badminton 1888)
- adverb (of the ball) moving in the direction of leg-side and towards the batsman, from a line initially further to the off
- adverb (of the fielders) positioned fairly close to the wicket rather than in the deepCitation ‘I can easily bring the field in for Harbhajan Singh but not so easily for Virender Sehwag’ (Rahul Dravid, quoted in Cricinfo Magazine January 2006, p39)
- noun a decision by the umpire that a batsman is not outCitation ‘They are the sole Judges of all Outs and Inns [and] of all fair or unfair Play’ (Laws 1744)
Information & Library Science
- adverb done internally by a company
- prefix (written as in-)added to some words to create the opposite meaning, e.g. ‘correct’ – ‘incorrect’
Medical
- prefix (written as in-)in, into, towards
Sports
- adjective used for indicating that a sports team or player is batting
Electronics
- abbreviation fornatural logarith (written as In)
- chemical symbol forindium (written as In)
- A lustrous silvery-white metallic chemical element whose atomic number is 49. It is soft, malleable, ductile, and when bent emits a characteristic metallic cry. It has over 30 known isotopes, of which one is stable. indium has many applications, including its uses in semiconductor devices, low-melting point alloys, including some which are liquid at room temperature, in photoconductors, in nuclear reactor control rods, in bearings and gaskets that work effectively at cryogenic temperatures, and it can be plated onto another metal to form corrosion-resistant mirrors. Its chemical symbol is In.
General Science
- noun a soft silvery metal, used in alloys, transistors and electroplating
Origin & History of “in”
In is a widespread preposition amongst the Indo-European languages. Greek had en, Latin in (whence French and Italian en and Spanish in), and amongst modern languages German and Dutch have in, Swedish i, Welsh yn, and Russian v, all of which point back to an original Indo-European *en or *n. The adverb in was not originally the same word; it comes from a conflation of two Old English adverbs, inn and inne, both ultimately related to the preposition in. (An inn is etymologically a place ‘in’ which people live or stay.).
