Udderly Slow
Jim from Northport wrote: “The
other night on Wheel of Fortune, the contest phrase was, till the cows come home. I say that the use of till in that clause is incorrect, while my wife
argues that it is correct. My logic is
that you don't till cows. The word is supposed to be a contraction of the word
until. Therefore the contest phrase should have been ‘til the cows come home. Please
point us in the correct direction.”
As far as meaning goes, if you
observe cows milling about, they are notoriously leisurely, and they wander almost aimlessly. So the image tells you that something
is going to take so long that frustration is almost guaranteed.
Jim, I fear that your wife is
correct. The heart of the matter here is that till is a word all by itself, not a shortened version of until. In
addition,‘til is a fairly recent invention. It is not universally accepted as a contraction of until, and its use in
formal writing is discouraged.
Adding to the difficulty is
that the word till has multiple meanings. Additionally, it can function not
only as a verb and a noun, but also as a preposition, a conjunction, and an
adverb. In the case of till the cows come
home, till functions as a subordinating conjunction; its role is to
complete or enhance the meaning of the accompanying independent clause:
“Junior, you can beg for the car keys till
the cows come home, but it ain’t gonna happen.”
As a conjunction, till means
“up to the time of,” and the first use cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1154. As a matching conjunction, until
means “up to the time of,” and it doesn’t appear until 1330. So till and until
are pretty much interchangeable in that sense.
What drew Jim off target was
one of the verb meanings of till – to work the soil for planting. The
figurative use of the verb means to cultivate some quality of mind or spirit.
As a noun, till can refer to a drawer or money-box in a business, or to a
stratum of hard clay or shale. But those meanings turn out to be irrelevant in
this case.
Listen to Mike’s program in real
time every Tuesday morning, 9:10 - 10:00 a.m. EST, by going to wtcmradio.com
and clicking on Listen Now. You’ll
also find about a month’s worth of podcasts there under The Ron Jolly Show.
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