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til

/tɪl/conjunction, preposition, noun

til is a conjunction meaning “until, till” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-I-L and has one syllable, and it appears 11 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does til mean?

conjunction

  1. 1

    colloquialuntil, till

preposition

  1. 1

    colloquialuntil, till

noun

  1. 1

    Sesame (plant: Sesamum indicum)

  2. 2

    Any of species Ocotea foetens in family Lauraceae, native to Madeira and the Canary Islands.

phrase

as TIL
  1. 1

    Initialism of today I learned....

    TIL that scientists call the universe's average color "cosmic latte".

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce til?

  • /tɪl/
  • /təl/

As a noun (“Sesame (plant: Sesamum indicum)”): /tɪl/, /tiːl/.

Til has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-til.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-til2.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of til

  • 'til
  • tils plural
  • teal
  • teel

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is til?

Til appears 11 times per million words in written English, the 6,784th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with til

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

til vs till2,400 G

Sounds like: till (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Where does til come from?

From Middle English til, from Old English til (“to, until”), possibly from Old Norse til, both from Proto-Germanic *tilą (“goal”), or Proto-Germanic *til (“to, towards”). Compare to Old Frisian til.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).