138 ― We moten þauh don him wo, ase hit is ofte wel wurðe. Wurthe also meant merited or deserved, as in this citation: texts distinguishable from worth a., but subsequently merged with it. wierðe, wyrðe, etc., a derivative from weorþ worth sb.1 or a. One upon a time there was an adjective wurthe, meaning worthy, which eventually merged with worth. They can similarly ask how much something is worth, so it stands to reason that worth is also an adjective. If someone asked how much something was valued, you would think of valued as an adjective. 1350 Athelston 391 ― Now is my goode hors forlorn,

By the time Old English had creoled into Middle English, we see the now-familiar formula: Which (I presume) means something like “Oxen horn be-eth 10 pennies worth”. The OED’s second citation for it is from the 7 th century: When used following its “object”, it acts as a noun with a possessive in front of it - or you might think of it as a postposition that takes a genitive. That cow is worth five hundred dollars to me.I can see why you would think of it as a preposition, in that it seems to take an object. The OED has a note about it:Īlmost always (now only) in predicative use, or following the sb.

What part of speech is the word is