till

¹ American  

[til] / tɪl /

preposition

1. up to the time of; until.

   to fight till death.

2. before (used in negative constructions).

   He did not come till today.

3. near or at a specified time.

   till evening.

4. Chiefly Midland, Southern, and Western U.S. before; to.

   It's ten till four on my watch.

5. Scot. and North England.

   1. to.

   2. unto.

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conjunction

1. to the time that or when; until.

2. before (used in negative constructions).

till ² American  

[til] / tɪl /

verb (used with object)

• tills,
  present (3rd person singular)
• tilled,
  past participle,  past
• tilling
  present participle

1. to labor, as by plowing or harrowing, upon (land) for the raising of crops; cultivate.

2. to plow.

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verb (used without object)

• tills,
  present (3rd person singular)
• tilled,
  past participle,  past
• tilling
  present participle

1. to cultivate the soil.

till ³ American  

[til] / tɪl /

noun

1. a drawer, box, or the like, as in a shop or bank, in which money is kept.

2. a drawer, tray, or the like, as in a cabinet or chest, for keeping valuables.

3. an arrangement of drawers or pigeonholes, as on a desk top.

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till ⁴ American  

[til] / tɪl /

noun

1. Geology. glacial drift consisting of an unassorted mixture of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders.

2. a stiff clay.

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till ¹ British  

/ tɪl /

verb

1. to cultivate and work (land) for the raising of crops

2. another word for plough

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till ² British  

/ tɪl /

noun

1. an unstratified glacial deposit consisting of rock fragments of various sizes. The most common is boulder clay

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till ³ British  

/ tɪl /

conjunction

1. Also (not standard): 'til.  short for until

2. to; towards

3. dialect in order that

   come here till I tell you

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till ⁴ British  

/ tɪl /

noun

1. a box, case, or drawer into which the money taken from customers is put, now usually part of a cash register

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till Scientific  

/ tĭl /

1. An unstratified, unconsolidated mass of boulders, pebbles, sand, and mud deposited by the movement or melting of a glacier. The size and shape of the sediments that constitute till vary widely.

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till Idioms  

1. In addition to the subsequent idioms beginning with till, also see hand in the till; until.

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Usage

Till is a variant of until that is acceptable at all levels of language. Until is, however, often preferred at the beginning of a sentence in formal writing: until his behaviour improves, he cannot become a member

Commonly Confused

Till1 and until are both old in the language and are interchangeable as both prepositions and conjunctions: It rained till (or until ) nearly midnight. The savannah remained brown and lifeless until (or till ) the rains began. Till is not a shortened form of until and is not spelled 'till. 'Til is usually considered a spelling error, though widely used in advertising: Open 'til ten.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• tiller
  noun
• mistilled
  adjective
• tillable
  adjective
• untilled
  adjective
• untilling
  adjective
• well-tilled
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Participles

• tilling
  present
• tilled
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• till
  simple
• tills
  simple
• have tilled
  perfect
• has tilled
  perfect
• am tilling
  progressive
• are tilling
  progressive
• is tilling
  progressive
• have been tilling
  perfect progressive
• has been tilling
  perfect progressive

Past

• tilled
  simple
• had tilled
  perfect
• was tilling
  progressive
• were tilling
  progressive
• had been tilling
  perfect progressive

Future

• will till
  simple
• will have tilled
  perfect
• will be tilling
  progressive
• will have been tilling
  perfect progressive

Etymology

Origin of till¹

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English (north) til “to,” from Old Norse til “to,” akin to Old English till “station, fixed point, standing-place” German Ziel “goal”

Origin of till²

First recorded before 900; Middle English tilen, Old English tilian “to strive after, get, till”; cognate with Dutch telen “to breed, cultivate,” German zielen “to aim at”

Origin of till³

First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English tylle, noun use of tylle “to draw, attract,” Old English -tyllan (in fortyllan “to seduce”); akin to Latin dolus “trick,” Greek dólos “bait (for fish); any cunning contrivance; treachery”

Origin of till⁴

First recorded in 1665–75; origin uncertain

Explanation

The noun till means the same as "cash register." When you work at the store long enough, they'll let you operate the till. When you pay taxes to your town, they go into the local till, or government fund, for community improvements. Till is also used as a verb, meaning to work the land, to get it ready for planting and harvesting. Till can also be used to mean "until," which makes things a bit confusing. So, technically, you could have a sentence like: Don't touch the till till you take the customer's money.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

till tills tilled tilling

"It rained all night, but we stayed put till the choppers came for us," he added.

From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026

So I started putting down ideas, and I realized: Should I reveal that it’s about an apartment right off the bat, or should I wait till the last line of the chorus?

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026

We’re staying at Club Tee Gee till close, till they kick us out.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026

"Can't play digital games till you fix it. Yet I can put my disc in and play. The all digital future looks great," read one comment on X, external.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

I put my hand on his shoulder and I looked into his eyes as deep and hard as I could, till I could tell that the sorrow that was in there was paying attention.

From "Ida B" by Katherine Hannigan

Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.

From Barron's ● Mar. 7, 2026

She starves herself for her cause, crosses oceans and tills land to create the utopia that she believes is possible.

From Salon ● Dec. 27, 2025

A tractor tills farmland in Cantua Creek, near the site where a massive solar and battery project is planned.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 25, 2025

The ratio of self-scan to staffed tills continues to be fiercely debated.

From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2025

A poor farmer who tills the nuns’ field, his three hollow-eyed children, and a guest, a traveling scholar, round out the company.

From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein

There is plenty of economic land waiting to be tilled.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026

While launching into his 2022 dembow-trap hit, “Titi Me Preguntó,” Bad Bunny walked the cameras through the makeshift sugar cane field, which was tilled by dancers dressed as jíbaros.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 9, 2026

In Scandinavia and parts of Northern Europe, these mobile cattle herders took just a few centuries to largely replace the sedentary farmers who had tilled the soil with stone tools for millennia.

From Science Magazine ● Jan. 10, 2024

As more land at home has been tilled to grow corn for ethanol, commodity prices have gone up worldwide.

From Salon ● May 6, 2023

He had emptied the vessel which life had tilled for him and found the emptying meaningless.

From "Native Son" by Richard Wright

In Middle Tennessee, tilling dirt was her role in fighting the Germans and Japanese.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026

Q: In The Blue Plate, you visited a Colorado farm where the farmers have eliminated things like mechanically tilling the soil or leaving land fallow, both of which degrade soil.

From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2024

So, instead of tilling to loosen soil or digging to add amendments, lay needed organic amendments on top where worms and rain can help them percolate down.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 16, 2024

If fields are flooded, that can hamper productivity and slow down planting or ploughing and tilling.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2023

We coordinated with the Secret Service to make sure our tilling wouldn’t disrupt any of the sensors or sight lines they needed to protect the grounds.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama