Till

How to spell till

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce till

What does till mean?

1. prepositionUp to the time that; until.
2. nounA drawer or machine for holding money in a shop, especially at a checkout.
3. verbTo prepare and work land for growing crops.

Till in a sentence

• preposition

  The corner shop stays open till midnight on weekdays.

• noun

  She counted the coins in the till at closing time.

• verb

  Local farmers till the soil thoroughly before planting wheat.

• preposition

  We waited at the gate till the rain finally eased.

• noun

  The cashier opened the till to give change.

• verb

  They hired a tractor to till the heavy clay in spring.

Where does till come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Several distinct words have collapsed into the single spelling 'till', which is part of why it feels slippery. The preposition and conjunction meaning 'up to a point in time' comes from Old English 'til', a Germanic word also preserved in Old Norse, meaning 'to' or 'as far as'; despite popular belief it is older than 'until', not a clipped form of it, so the apostrophe in the spelling 'til is historically unnecessary. The verb meaning 'to cultivate the soil' descends from a separate Old English word, 'tilian', which originally meant 'to strive for' or 'to work towards' and only later narrowed to the labour of working the land. The noun for a cash drawer appeared in the 1400s with an uncertain origin, possibly from a dialect verb meaning 'to draw out'. The geological sense, the unsorted clay and stones left by glaciers, was adopted by Scottish writers in the 1700s. All these strands share the modern look of a short, doubled-l word, and the main spelling trap is simply remembering that 'till' is a complete word in its own right.

How the word is built

• till (a single, unanalysable Old English root; not a shortened form of 'until')