tillvstolConfusable pair

Quick tell: till is a preposition, tol is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“till” is a preposition and “tol” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,706
“till” frequency rank
#41,433
“tol” frequency rank
43139
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature till tol
Definition Until; to, up to; as late as (a given time). Tall.

Letter map: till vs tol

Shared letters muted; letters that set till and tol apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
till
3 ch
tol

Grammar separator: till vs tol

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: till is apreposition and tolanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43139, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

till is recorded at frequency rank #1,706, classified as aprep, pronounced /tɪl/. tol is at rank #41,433, tagged as anadj.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 43139, this pair ranks #242,810 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of till vs tol

Shared letters: lt. Private to "till": i. Private to "tol": o.

"till" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "tol" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tillitll · til · tlil · ttill

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "till" and "tol" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "till" is a preposition and "tol" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "till" vs "tol" - which ranks higher?
"till" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,706 in our English list, against #41,433 for "tol". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "till" vs "tol" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "till" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "tol" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #242,810 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "till" and "tol" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Taf vs tol". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #242,810 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list