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I've come across a sentence that looks like this:

Years wore on and the eagerly awaited end of the world still hadn't come.

  1. I don't understand why there is "still" in the sentence or rather its meaning here.
  2. For me past simple sounds better in the second part of the sentence.
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    Have you looked it up in a dictionary? This is the adverb, not the adjective.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 20:04
  • I have a translation of this sentence in my book into my mother language and "still" is like in this sentence: "He still hasn't come back."
    – applepie192
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 20:08
  • There it has the same meaning, and it is placed in the same place: immediately before the verb phrase it modifies.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 20:16
  • still reinforces the idea. "I am waiting", and "I am still waiting".
    – Weather Vane
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 20:59

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This sentence is clearly from a past-tense narrative; presumably it marks a transition from one episode, in which people are eagerly looking forward to the imminent end of the world, to the next episode many years later, in which people still hope for the end of the world but it has not yet arrived. Still expresses the sense of disappointment and frustration more strongly than yet: "All these years and it still hasn't arrived."

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