Til
To. As a preposition in Ulster Scots, used where standard English uses 'to': 'I'm going til the shop', 'gie it til me', 'come til my house'. The Norse-origin alternative to 'to', still in current Ulster Scots speech.
Etymology
From Old Norse 'til' meaning to, towards. The same word survives in modern Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish ('til' meaning to). Norse settlement in northern Britain and Ireland left the preposition in Scots and Ulster Scots, where it competes with standard English 'to'. In English everywhere outside the Norse-influenced regions, 'til' meaning 'to' has been completely replaced by 'to'. The English preposition 'until' is a related form: 'un' (= up) + 'til' (= to), preserving the Norse word in compound.
In a sentence
"Come til the table, your dinner's getting cold."
Historical notes
Til is one of the cleanest pieces of Norse linguistic heritage in Ulster speech. The preposition is fully interchangeable with 'to' in Ulster Scots ('come til me' = 'come to me'), and modern speakers may use both in the same conversation without thinking. The Old Norse origin places the inheritance well over a thousand years old. The English preposition 'until' carries the same Norse word inside it - a small linguistic fossil that English-elsewhere does not recognise.
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry TIL prep. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary