Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To prepare (land) for the raising of crops, as by plowing and harrowing; cultivate.
- prep. Until.
- conj. Until.
- n. A drawer, small chest, or compartment for money, as in a store.
- n. A supply of money; a purse.
- n. Glacial drift composed of an unconsolidated, heterogeneous mixture of clay, sand, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To exert one's self for; labor for; procure by exertion; earn; gain; obtain; get.
- To attain; reach; extend.
- To labor on; work; cultivate: as, to till the soil.
- To set; prepare.
- To prop up.
- To; unto: expressing motion to a place or person.
- Up to; down to; as far as: expressing distance, extent, or degree.
- To; unto: expressing action directed to or having regard to a person.
- To; unto: expressing change or result.
- To the time of; until: as, I waited till five o'clock.
- To the time that; to the time when; until.
- To draw; pull; hence, to entice; allure.
- To draw; stretch; reach.
- n. A drawer; a tray, as of a trunk or box. Also called tiller.
- n. Specifically A money-drawer; a drawer under or in a shop-counter, in which money is kept.
- n. In printing: In earlier forms of hand printing-presses, a crosspiece extending between the main uprights of the frame, and serving to guide and steady the hose or sleeve, which contained the spindle and screws. Also called shelf.
- n. One of the spaces or cells between the ribbed projections of the platen of a hand-press.
- n. In geology, a stiff clay containing boulders of all sizes up to several tons in weight, and these often smoothed and striated by glacial action. The word first became current among geologists, with this meaning, in Scotland, but it is now occasionally used elsewhere. Also called
boulder-clay .
Wiktionary
- prep. now dialectal to
- prep. until, up to, as late as (a given time)
- conj. until, until the time that
- n. A cash register
- n. A removable box within a cash register containing the money
- n. The contents of a cash register, for example at the beginning or end of the day or of a cashier's shift
- v. transitive to develop so as to improve or prepare for usage; to cultivate (said of knowledge, virtue, mind etc)
- v. transitive to work or cultivate or plough (soil); to prepare for growing vegetation and crops
- v. intransitive to cultivate soil
- n. glacial drift consisting of a mixture of clay, sand, pebbles and boulders
- n. dialect manure or other material used to fertilize land
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Prov. Eng. A vetch; a tare.
- n. A tray or drawer in a chest.
- n. A money drawer in a shop or store.
- n. (Geol.) A deposit of clay, sand, and gravel, without lamination, formed in a glacier valley by means of the waters derived from the melting glaciers; -- sometimes applied to alluvium of an upper river terrace, when not laminated, and appearing as if formed in the same manner.
- n. A kind of coarse, obdurate land.
- prep. To; unto; up to; as far as; until; -- now used only in respect to time, but formerly, also, of place, degree, etc., and still so used in Scotland and in parts of England and Ireland
- conj. As far as; up to the place or degree that; especially, up to the time that; that is, to the time specified in the sentence or clause following; until.
- v. To plow and prepare for seed, and to sow, dress, raise crops from, etc., to cultivate.
- v. obsolete To prepare; to get.
- v. To cultivate land.
WordNet 3.0
- v. work land as by ploughing, harrowing, and manuring, in order to make it ready for cultivation
- n. unstratified soil deposited by a glacier; consists of sand and clay and gravel and boulders mixed together
- n. a treasury for government funds
- n. a strongbox for holding cash
Etymologies
- Unknown, but possibly via etymology 3 (the verb) because alluvial deposit is used as a fertilizer. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English tilen, from Old English tilian.Middle English, from Old English til, from Old Norse.Middle English tille.Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Promoted to Headline (H3) on 2/7/09: Five 'till Midnight and the Clock Ticks on yahooBuzzArticleHeadline =' Five \'till Midnight and the Clock Ticks on '; yahooBuzzArticleSummary =' Article: With Gaza in rubbles, Barack Obama at the helm, George Mitchell willing to get real,, and Israeli elections looming, it is critical that politics be set aside for the sake of responding to the fierce urgency of the moment. ”
“T.ey stayed with me till half past eleven, when we set out for Mr T. Hope's rout, but after waiting in the street _till near one_, we found to get in was impossible.”
The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1
“I sot up till the clock was gone twelve last night, a-lookin at em, I did, till they stared at me out o the picturs as if theyd know when I spoke to em.”
III. A Voice from the Past. Book IVThe Valley of Humiliation
“Maggie, he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, let us never go home again, till no one can part us, till we are married.”
“Gradual_, a _Short Sequens_, the _Gospel_, the _Nicene Creed_, and a number of other matters, not excepting even the _elevation_ of the host, but not for adoration, which latter he retained till [sic] _till twelve years after the Diet at Augsburg!”
“_So_, till _the_ JUDGMENT that YOURSELF _arise_ [_till_ then],”
“I therefore consented to stay, not till the recovery of their nurse, but ’till I should receive a letter from my friends at Paris.”
“Add nothing, and diminish nothing, let this lamp shine “till the day dawn, ’till the morning of the resurrection,” and walk ye in the light of it, and do not kindle any other sparkles, else ye shall lie down in the grave in sorrow, and rise in sorrow.”
“Neither of us said another word till the dorm came into sight.”
“As a final oddity, while I remembered the movie, I didn't know the title till I caught it again a few years ago, a definite Wow! experience.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘till’.
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Off label definitions
Commonly used words with multiple meanings, the others being obscure or rarely used. Good to know for that dang analogy exam.
marquise, navette, indorse, crew, defile, poop, straiten, heckle, frit, notate, oblate, hotspur and 16 more...
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garden me pretty
fritillary, honeysuckle, anenome, trug, love-lies-bleeding, convolvulus, clover, till, wheelbarrow, dibber, trailing hearts, viola and 2 more...
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Belfast lingo
Thanks to this list, if you're ever around of group of people from Belfast, you can now understand what they're saying!
swall, score, flim, whips, zoink, hack, craic, hallion, snattered, waab, boke, eejit and 20 more...
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October Words-11337
During the month of October, post at least 10 new words to this list. Make sure you cite where you read the word (book/author/pg) and quote the context/sentence where you found it. If someone has a...
amplification, till, osmosis, osmoregulation, pinocytosis, junction, transduction, paralysis, afflicted, isotonic, diverse, entrenched and 48 more...
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no little thing
it bothers me when i hear someone who have experienced something life changing use the phrase: now i appreciate the little things. I DON'T BELIEVE THERE ARE ANY LITTLE THINGS. everything is EXTRAOR...
letters, living, understand, narrow, behavior, personal, need, meant, untamed, world, soldier, 'cause and 241 more...
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slumry's Words
cattywampus, ingratiate, lackadaisical, exactitude, exfoliate, fulminate, circumnavigation, circuitous, debride, sidle, sequester, chicory and 1002 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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Lees
Items of little or no value that are left behind by physical or biological processes other than passing through an alimentary canal. See also Valse's Leftovers and reesetee's Hogwash! for other tak...
lees, dross, dregs, orts, debris, jetsam, flotsam, rubbage, rubbish, trash, refuse, junk and 130 more...
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Landscape
riparian, littoral, talus, fen, ambit, savanna, remnant prairie, shortgrass prairie, tallgrass prairie, marsh, swamp, marshy and 199 more...
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Ptolemy's Gate
Words and phrases from Jonathan Stroud's book, Ptolemy's Gate.
fall afoul, fleet, tamarisk, krait, inkstone, hotted up, down-market, have a truck with, brio, fatalistic, knock-kneed, conserve and 210 more...
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random
words I read but don't know
nascent, proxy, desultory, charlatan, churlish, emaciated, gaudy, shill, lurid, frisson, marauding, plunder and 610 more...
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merfee's Words
supple, dichotomy, relish, rhapsody, pneumonoultramicr..., embrace, ishmael, ebullient, recalcitrant, elegy, char, lugubrious and 522 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Vocabulary
My ever expanding vocabulary...
feuterer, abattoir, kibosh, sequin, shiftless, scrimshanker, sic, moniker, dogsbody, contranym, autoantonym, exhortation and 306 more...
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usage
whenever I'm not sure about correct usage of a word. For some words, I confuse their meanings, for others I'm never sure how to write them down. So, whenever I find myself going to wordnik searchin...
thus, ameliorate, bespoke, misanthrope, contempt, resolute, in lieu, mean, ephemeral, ubiquitous, dismal, admonishing and 81 more...
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Shopaholic!
shop, store, kiosk, mall, retail, market, supermarket, bodega, superstore, bazaar, marketplace, pharmacy and 23 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for till.

alexz I found out that till is short for 'to while'.
Here's an analytical study of 'to' 'till' 'until'. http://goo.gl/i0r7x
It's good reading.
"An analytical dictionary of the English language - Page clxxix
books.google.ca/books?id=Wwi5sUW6R18C
David Booth - 1835 - Read - More editions
that Till is a word compounded of To and While, i. e. Time. And you will observe that the coalescence of ... So that when we say 'from morn till night ' it is no more than if we said 'from morn to time night.' When we say 'from morn to night,' the ..." Feb 20, 2013
myblankinfinity An interesting article on the subject of a minute difference between till and until.
http://contentcaramel.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/till-and-until-are-different/ Feb 20, 2013
claironeill An alternative way of saying 'to' (Belfast)
'I'm going to till the shop." Jul 27, 2011
jennarenn How do you know that till came first? Link, please. :) Mar 2, 2011
dontcry So, is until what I do to my garden after the harvest? Feb 28, 2011
ruzuzu Hmph.
*wanders over to 'cause* Feb 28, 2011
yarb That makes sense, rolig. After all, you only have to write one extra letter, and you don't have to worry about that extra l. Feb 28, 2011
ruzuzu That makes me feel a little better--I was assuming until was long for unto. Feb 28, 2011
rolig Actually, until is long for till. "Till" came first. Feb 28, 2011
ruzuzu Why is till short for until? You save yourself only one letter, and you have to remember to add in that extra l. Feb 28, 2011
lweber5@scf.edu Online Dictionary. The size and shape of the sediments that constitute till vary widely. Oct 6, 2010