Timeline for Is there "not...till"? Does its meaning equal to "not...until"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
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| Aug 9, 2014 at 1:12 | comment | added | user230 |
For reference, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) has 786 results for ' til (because of how the corpus is put together, you have to put a space after the apostrophe when you search) and 12060 results for till. That's about a 15:1 ratio in favor of till.
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| Aug 9, 2014 at 1:06 | comment | added | pabo |
My world is shattered. I will start using till exclusively, and have started making a list of all the people I have previously misjudged by their use of it. Apologies to ensue.
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| Aug 9, 2014 at 1:04 | comment | added | user230 | The AHD suggests that 'til is now acceptable as an alternative respelling of till: "Till is actually the older word, with until having been formed by the addition to it of the prefix un-, meaning "up to." In the 18th century the spelling 'till became fashionable, as if till were a shortened form of until. Although 'till is now nonstandard, 'til is sometimes used in this way and is considered acceptable, though it is etymologically incorrect." Of course, till is still standard and in widespread use. | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 0:59 | comment | added | user230 | @Qubei No, but till is most certainly standard. The non-standard 'til indicates in spelling the reanalysis of till as an abbreviation of until. It's certainly interesting that speakers like yourself conceptualize it this way, and I don't have anything against the spelling 'til myself, but I recommend avoiding it because it may convince people that the speller is ignorant. | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 0:59 | comment | added | Qubei | @snailplane err.. the oldest spelling isn't the same as the standard spelling. | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 0:54 | comment | added | user230 | @pabo Sure, pretty much any source you like. EtymOnline is one that's freely available. The Oxford English Dictionary says: "ME. (originally northern) untill, f. ON. und (retained only in unz, undz = und es), = Goth. und (and untē), OS. und (usually unt), OFris. und (ont), up to, as far as + till (till prep. and conj).]". You can, of course, scoff for whatever reason you like, but scoffing at someone for preferring the standard spelling of a word is a rather strange choice. | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 0:45 | comment | added | pabo |
@snailplane Do you have a source for that? I always assumed 'til came from until, and I use 'til exclusively (and even scoff at till users).
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| Aug 3, 2014 at 1:09 | history | edited | Qubei | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 238 characters in body
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| Aug 3, 2014 at 1:03 | comment | added | Qubei | Or just use until, as it is far more popular word today, used over 90% of the time (according to an ngram query) | |
| Aug 2, 2014 at 23:07 | comment | added | user230 | The 'til spelling represents a misconception that the word is abbreviated from until, when in fact it is the older, more basic word. I suggest using the standard spelling till instead. | |
| Aug 2, 2014 at 22:41 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 3, 2014 at 0:01 | |||||
| Aug 2, 2014 at 22:38 | history | answered | Qubei | CC BY-SA 3.0 |