"until"= spatial "to" ?

[Seán Fitzpatrick]

I used “’til” in a paper in grad school in about 1977.  The professor chided
me for being overly nice.  He was right.

Seán Fitzpatrick
  Time flies like an arrow.
    Fruit flies like a banana.
      Chuck Yeager flies, like, airplanes.
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Doyle [mailto:cdoyle at UGA.EDU] 
Sent: Friday, 05 May, 2006 07:57
Subject: Re: "until"= spatial "to" ?

 

Of course, that's an archaic usage; it's interesting that it

may be being revived.  Or maybe it's just a hoity-toity

NPRism!

 

For some years I've been noticing, in student papers, an

increasing occurrence of the adverb and conjunction TILL

spelled 'TIL.  Now I'm seeing it on billboards, in

headlines, and even in professionally-proofread newspaper

and magazine articles.  Obviously (as my students explain)

TILL is being regarded as a contraction of UNTIL (rather

than its historical root).

 

--Charlie

 

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>Sender:       American Dialect Society

>Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>

>Subject:      "until"= spatial "to" ?

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> 

>Ivan Watson on NPR, reporting  from northern Iraq,  spoke

of an area that extended from point A "until the border."

 

>AM

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