# till

Pronunciation: say "TIL" /tɪl/

## Preposition

1. Up to the time of; as late as a given moment.
   - Simple: Up to a certain time, but not after that point.
   - _She danced till dawn at the wedding celebration._
   - _The talks continued till late afternoon without a break._
7. Before a specified time or event; especially used to state the minutes remaining before an hour.
   - Simple: Before a given time, often used to say how many minutes are left before the hour.
   - _The clock read five till six when the train pulled in._
   - _By the time we finally found a parking spot, it was already a quarter till seven._
5. To or toward a place, person or thing. *(dialectal)*
   - Simple: To, as in 'she was good till us'.
10. Used in some dialects to mean 'so that', introducing a purpose or intended result. *(dialectal)*
   - Simple: Used to mean 'so that' when showing the reason something is done.
   - _Give me your hand there till I help you up onto the wall._
   - _Come in out of the rain till I get you a towel and something hot to drink._

## Conjunction

2. Up to the time that the event named in the following clause takes place.
   - Simple: Up to the moment that something else happens.
   - _She read to the children till they fell asleep._
   - _The crew worked till the last crate was loaded._

## Noun

3. The drawer where money is kept in a shop's cash register or at a bank teller's counter; chiefly in British use, the cash register itself.
   - Simple: The machine or drawer in a shop or bank where money is kept.
   - _The cashier opened the till to give the customer change._
   - _At closing, the manager emptied the till and locked the takings away._
6. The money held in a cash register, counted at the beginning or end of a day or a cashier's shift.
   - Simple: All the money in a cash register, counted at the start or end of a shift.
   - _At closing, every till had to match the recorded sales._
   - _His till was over by a few dollars after the busy lunch rush._
8. Glacial drift made up of a mixture of clay, sand, pebbles, and boulders deposited by ice.
   - Simple: A mix of clay, sand, stones, and rocks left behind by a moving glacier.
   - _The valley floor is covered in thick till from the last ice age._
   - _Geologists examined the till to trace the glacier's path across the lowlands._
11. Manure or other material spread on land to make it more fertile. *(dialectal)*
   - Simple: Manure or other matter spread on land to help crops grow.
12. A small tray or sliding drawer set inside a chest or trunk.
   - Simple: A small tray or drawer inside a chest or box.

## Verb

4. To work, cultivate, or plow soil, breaking it up to prepare it for growing crops and vegetation.
   - Simple: To dig and turn over soil to get it ready for planting.
   - _Each spring they till the long field behind the barn._
   - _Workhorses once helped farmers till the stubborn clay of the valley floor._
9. To develop something such as knowledge, virtue, or the mind so as to improve it or prepare it for use. *(literary)*
   - Simple: To slowly build up and improve something like your mind, skills, or good habits.
   - _Years of study till the mind and prepare it for deeper learning._
   - _Like a patient gardener, she tilled her students' minds, trusting that curiosity would one day take root._

## Verb

13. To prepare something, or to obtain or get it. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To make something ready, or to go and get it.

## Other meanings

- (noun) A vetch or tare, a scrambling leguminous plant grown as fodder or growing wild among crops.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–2, 5, 7, 10** — From Middle English "til," from Northern Old English "til," related to Old Norse "til" ("to, till"); both go back to Proto-Germanic roots meaning "to, toward" and "a planned point in time." It is not a contraction of "until"; rather "until" comes from "till" plus the prefix "un-." It is cognate with Danish "til" and Swedish "till," and related to German "Ziel" ("goal").
**Meanings 3, 6, 12** — Middle English tylle may come from tillen ("to draw"), which goes back to *tyllan, an Old English verb meaning "to draw, attract." Another possibility is Anglo-Norman tylle ("compartment"), which goes back to Old Norse þilja ("plank") by way of Old French tille, meaning a compartment or a shelter on a ship.
**Meanings 4, 9, 13** — From Middle English "tilyen," from Old English "tilian."
**Meanings 8, 11** — Of unknown origin, but possibly connected to the verb "till" (etymology 3), because alluvial deposit is used as a fertilizer.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/till (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).