Other forms: tilling, tilled, tills
The till is the machine at a shop counter where the money goes — the drawer that pings open when the assistant takes your cash. A queue at the till, a sign saying please pay at the till.
That is British; Americans say cash register or checkout. Till is also the everyday word for until — 'wait till Friday', 'open till six' — and it is not a shortening of until, whatever the apostrophe in 'til suggests. A third till is a farming verb: to till the soil is to break it up and get it ready for planting, and tillage is the noun. Fingers in the till is what you say about a worker helping himself to the shop's money.
1nountillThe drawer or machine at a shop counter that holds the money taken.~2%
“She counted the notes in the till at closing time.”
synonyms: cash register, checkout
2prepositionparticularUp to a particular time; until.~96%
“The shop stays open till nine on Thursdays.”
3verbbreakTo break up and prepare land for growing crops.~2%
“The field had been tilled every spring for a century.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 15 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: cash register
The till that means until came from northern Old English and Old Norse til, to or toward, from a Germanic word for a planned point in time. The surprise is which way round it goes with until: until was built out of till by adding un-, meaning up to. So till is the parent word and until the child, not a lazy clipping of it.
Proto-Germanic
*til — to, toward
Old Norse
til — to, till
Old English
til
Middle English
til
English, today
till
Built from
From Middle English til, from Northern Old English til, from or akin to Old Norse til (“to, till”); both from Proto-Germanic til (“to, toward”), from Proto-Germanic tilą (“planned point in time”). Not a contraction of until; rather, until comes from till with the prefix un- (“against; toward; up to”) also found in unto. Cognate with Old Frisian til (“to, till”), Danish til (“to”), Swedish till (“to, till”), Icelandic til (“to, till”). Also related to Old English til (“good”), {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA