from

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• preposition Used to indicate a specified place or time as a starting point.
• preposition Used to indicate a specified point as the first of two limits.
• preposition Used to indicate a source, cause, agent, or instrument.
• preposition Used to indicate constituent material or materials.
• preposition Used to indicate separation, removal, or exclusion.
• preposition Used to indicate differentiation.
• preposition Because of.
• idiom (from away) Not native to a state or locality.

from The Century Dictionary.

• Out of the limits, locality, or presence of, or connection with: expressing departure or point of departure, separation, discrimination, removal, or distance in space, time, condition, etc.
• [Sometimes used absolutely, in the sense of distant, absent, or coming from: as, a visitor from the city.
• As regards time, or succession in a series or in logical connection: noting the point of departure or reckoning: as, he was studious from his childhood; from that time onward.
• As regards idea, aim, or purpose: as, such a result was far from my intention; this is aside from our object.
• As regards state, condition, or effect: as, I am far from believing it; he is far from rich (that is, from being rich); he is a long way from being an atheist.
• As regards direction: away from.
• As regards point of view: out of; off.
• Out of: expressing derivation, withdrawal, or abstraction.
• As regards occupation, relation, or situation: as, to retire from office or from business; to return from a journey; to withdraw from society.
• As regards a principal receptacle or place of deposit: as, to draw money from the bank; coal is dug from mines.
• As regards a whole or mass of which a part is taken or considered.
• As regards state or condition: as, to start from sleep; to go from bad to worse.
• Out of the charge, custody, or possession of: as, his office or the seal was taken from him.
• In consequence of; on account or by reason of; on the strength or by aid of; as a result of; through: as, to act from a sense of duty, or from necessity; the conclusion from these facts is evident; to argue from false premises; from what I hear, I think he is guilty.
• [From is much used before local adverbs or prepositions used elliptically as nouns: as, from above, from below, from beneath, from behind, from beyond, from far off, etc., such phrases being used as unitary adverbs or prepositions, as in ‘from beyond Jordan,’ ‘from out of the bowels of the earth.’ From forth, from off, from out, etc., are usually transpositions: as, “from forth (forth from) his bridal bower” (Pope, Odyssey); warned from off (off from) the land.
• From hence, from thence, from whence are pleonastic, ‘from’ being implied in the adverb; but they have long been in good use.
• Forth; out; fro.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• preposition Out of the neighborhood of; lessening or losing proximity to; leaving behind; by reason of; out of; by aid of; -- used whenever departure, setting out, commencement of action, being, state, occurrence, etc., or procedure, emanation, absence, separation, etc., are to be expressed. It is construed with, and indicates, the point of space or time at which the action, state, etc., are regarded as setting out or beginning; also, less frequently, the source, the cause, the occasion, out of which anything proceeds; -- the antithesis and correlative of to

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• preposition With the source or provenance of or at.
• preposition With the origin, starting point or initial reference of or at.
• preposition With the separation, exclusion or differentiation of.