We focus here on the use of absent in such utterances as Absent any other facts, there arises an implied contract. is usage is labelled "preposition" in dictionaries of English. e question we ask is whether absent really functions as a preposition in English nowadays. is would involve a change from a lexical category (that of adjective) to a grammatical one (preposition)-in other words, a grammaticalization process. A er explaining how we collected the data used in this study (section 2), we consider how absent might possibly have grammaticalized into a preposition (section 3). We argue that the change is not so much about the grammaticalization of an individual item as about the emergence of a new construction, a process known as constructionalization. In section 4 other contemporary usages of absent are examined, and evidence that the item has acquired prepositional status is adduced. Finally, since we posit matching through analogy with the construction to be key in that process, a comparison between the prepositions without and absent is drawn in present-day English (section 5).