till

[Laurence Urdang]

I thought I'd seen every possible variation of the open quote/ apostrophe choices for the varieties of the shorter form till I saw a tv commercial yesterday for a Rhode Island furniture company advertising that it was open til' 9 pm on Thursdays.
  L. Urdang

"Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"
Subject: Re: till
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>I should point out that "half pas(t)" occurred only in this locution
>and not in ordinary speech. To quote Richard Pryor:
>
>Q. "What y'all waitin' for?"
>A. "'Leven-thirty. Don't nothin' start happenin' till eleven-thirty."

As I recall it, the answer is "Leven-thirty. We gonna pitch a bitch at ele=
ven-thirty."
(Perhaps this line followed the one quoted by Wilson??

This was the first time I ever heard "pitch a bitch", a phrase which has se=
rved me well over the intervening years.

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