Etymology

The prep. represented by OIcel til (‘to, until’ etc.) is highly characteristic of NGmc, and occupies the semantic space taken up in WGmc by *tō (and other prepositions in a temporal sense); reflexes beyond NGmc are scarce, but cp. OFris til and early OE (Nhb) til (see further SPS).  It is usually supposed to have developed from a n.*til- ‘destination’, i.e. ‘with the limit or goal of (the place or time named)’ (OED); cp. Go til, OE till ‘fixed point, station’, MLG til, tel ‘point of time, aim’. The tenuous PCOE evidence and the N and E bias of the late OE and early ME witnesses argue strongly in favour of at least some ON input into ME til. Some authorities prefer to allow for some input from a surviving native reflex, however vestigial (hence the dual etymologies of OED, MED, TGD and GDS, and the cautious summary by SPS) while others (e.g. Bj.) treat the ME word straightforwardly as a Norse loan, and some explicitly discount any native input (see esp. Krygier 2011).

PGmc Ancestor

*til- 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

til ‘to, until etc.'
(ONP til (præp.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far til, Icel til, Norw til, Dan til, Sw till, til

OE Cognate

til (Nhb) 'to, until'

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

C5ac

Attestation

On late OE occurrences see Dance, Krygier 2011, SPS. The simplex prep. is frequent in N/EM texts (and occasionally met further afield) in usages broadly equivalent to those of to from the earliest ME; MED has one citation from c1150(OE) Hrl.MQuad.(Hrl 6258B), and it is frequent from Orrm onwards.  In temporal senses (MED (prep.) sense 7 and (conj.), ‘until’ etc.) it is recorded first from ChronE s.aa. 1137, 1140, Orrm and the Trin.Hom., and is widespread dialectally from the 14c.  Used in MnE Sc., Ire. and N/NE dial (see further EDD, OED).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 85, 449, 532 etc.; Pe 548, 676, 976; Cl 484, 498, 548 etc.; Pat 236, 272, 377; Erk 12, 136, 313; WA 340, 463, 564 etc.

The prep. is always postpositive in Cl.

Bibliography

MED til (prep.) , til (conj.) , OED till (prep., conj., and adv.) , HTOED , HTOED , EDD till (prep. and conj.), Dance til, Bj. 222, SPS 492, de Vries til, Mag. til (1), Bj-L. til, Heid. tila-, Kroonen *tila-, AEW til (3)