When I was in elementary, junior high, and high school, I was fortunate to have teachers who assigned bazillions of writing assignments. We wrote about what we wanted to be when we grew up. We wrote and illustrated stories. We wrote reports on states of the union. We wrote book reviews. And essays. And analyses. And poems.
And I used the word "till." As in, "I won't be able to go to law school till I finish college."
And my teachers--not all of them, but most of them--invariably crossed it out and substituted "until."
I was always unclear as to why they crossed out "till." I read a lot, and I read "till" all the time. Being chronically overconfident, I figured my teachers were simply unaware of this usage of till.
The funny thing is, I still get a little thrill every time I read "till." Just this Sunday, as I was reading the first chapters of Sense and Sensibility, I read "till" at least twice and thought, "Ha! It can be used that way."
2 comments:
I think it's just a classic usage of the word. I wonder why your teachers wouldn't want you to use it. So strange. It is, after all, the number one definition of 'till' on dictionary.com. ;)
I had a word like that... but now I can't remember. It'll hit me one day when I read it in a book, though. We're so alike sometimes.
I used the word "succor" in elementary school and had it crossed out. I think there's a general ban on old world language untill (till?) college, where one may wax eloquent all the day long.
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