Still is the word for a thing that has not stopped. It is still raining. She is still asleep upstairs. Are you still here? Half past eleven and the kettle is still on.
The other still has nothing to do with time: it means not moving at all. Sit still. Hold the camera still. A still lake, a still afternoon with no wind in the trees, a still photograph, which is one frozen frame lifted out of a film. Still water is water without bubbles, and that is how you will meet the word on every menu in Europe — still or sparkling. Dropped at the front of a sentence it works as a gentle however: it rained all week; still, we got out twice. And a still is the copper vessel in a distillery where spirits are made.
1adverbcontinuingContinuing up to now, and not finished.~69%
“It was still raining when the match started.”
2adjectiveadjNot moving; with no movement in it.~22%
“The horse stood perfectly still while she got on.”
synonyms: motionless, calm
3adverbadverbEven so; all the same.~7%
“The tickets cost a fortune. Still, we would go again.”
4adjectivestillOf a drink, having no bubbles in it.~2%
“A bottle of still water, please.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 115 of them on a sense (25 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English stille meant quiet and motionless, from a root that means to be silent, to be still — the same family as stall, the place where an animal stands and stays put. The sense about time grew straight out of that picture: a thing that is still there is a thing that has not moved on. The other still, the copper vessel in a distillery, is not a relative at all. It is a clipped distil, from Latin distillare.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)telH- — to be silent; to be still
Proto-West Germanic
*stillī
Old English
stille — still, quiet
Middle English
stille — motionless, stationary
English, today
still
From Middle English stille (“motionless, stationary”), from Old English stille (“still, quiet”), from Proto-West Germanic stillī, from Proto-Indo-European (s)telH- (“to be silent; to be still”). Cognate with Scots stil (“still”), stq stil (“motionless, calm, quiet”), West Frisian stil (“quiet, still”), Dutch stil (“quiet, silent, still”), Low German still (“quiet, silent, still”), German still (“still, quiet, tranquil, silent”), Swedish stilla (“quiet, silent, peaceful”), Icelandic stilltur (“set, quiet, calm, still”). Related to stall. noun: Falkland Islander Military slang, short for still a Benny, since the military had been instructed not to refer to the islanders by the derogatory term Benny (which see).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA