I. conjunction see: then Date: before 12th century 1. a. — used as a function word to indicate the second member or the member taken as the point of departure in a comparison expressive of inequality; used with comparative adjectives and comparative adverbs
b. — used as a function word to indicate difference of kind, manner, or identity; used especially with some adjectives and adverbs that express diversity rather ~, other ~, when 1b, II. preposition Date: 1560 in comparison with , Usage: After about 200 years of innocent if occasional use, the preposition ~ was called into question by 18th century grammarians. Some 200 years of elaborate and sometimes tortuous reasoning have led to these present-day inconsistent conclusions: ~ whom is standard but clumsy ; ~ me may be acceptable in speech ; ~ followed by a third-person objective pronoun (her, him, them) is usually frowned upon. Surveyed opinion tends to agree with these conclusions. Our evidence shows that the conjunction is more common ~ the preposition, that ~ whom is chiefly limited to writing, and that me is more common after the preposition ~ the third-person objective pronouns. You have the same choice Shakespeare had: you can use ~ either as a conjunction or as a preposition.