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Which of the following statements is more appropriate?

  1. You have to stay here till the morning.
  2. You have to stay here till morning.

The second one seems more fluent to me. What do you think? Please explain what the difference between the two expressions is.

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2 vs. 3 is a dupe of What is the difference between “till” and “until”? –  RegDwigнt Jan 16 '12 at 21:26
Thank you for fixing that up. –  user17857 Jan 16 '12 at 21:34
Neither is incorrect, go with the more fluent choice. –  AdamRedwine Jan 16 '12 at 21:39

4 Answers 4

They're both completely valid, and I don't think there's any difference in nuance either. But it's worth noting that including the is less common, and that both versions have long been less common than until morning.

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You left off til morning which, on a google search, gets about as many hits as till morning (doing a search on til gives both til and 'til). Til and till together get about 1/2 of the hits as until but that isn't surprising since most folks will say til / till but write until. So that doesn't truly tell us anything. –  AnWulf Jan 17 '12 at 5:14
@AnWulf: I left off til morning because in NGram (which is more accurately indexed published/written instances) it "flatlined" by comparison with the others. This despite the fact that apostrophes aren't indexed by NGram, so it would have automatically included 'til anyway. Also note that for their "whole Internet" indexes Google do some odd things. I just checked the top-ranked page for til morning - it contains 11 occurences of till, but not a single til. Indexes into books aren't everything, but they usually mean a lot more than "whole Internet Google". –  FumbleFingers Jan 17 '12 at 5:54
It's interesting that the reverse is the case for "till afternoon" and "till the afternoon". The latter is more common. –  Shoe Jan 17 '12 at 6:29
@Shoe: That is strange. Hundreds of thousands of written instances in Google Books show a consistent ratio over two centuries. With until the morning it's 2:1 in favour of discarding the article, but with afternoon it's 2:1 the other way around. That accords with my "inner ear", but I've no real idea why. –  FumbleFingers Jan 17 '12 at 13:19
@FumbleFingers ... Did yu put quotes around it? I just did a search on "til morning" and all the results inheld either til or 'til (4.3 mil hits). –  AnWulf Jan 17 '12 at 13:39

You have stay here till the morning.

is terribly ungrammatical, having nothing to do with till' or 'the' but because it is missing 'to'. IT should be:

You have to stay here till the morning.

If you want to compare with your other item:

You have to stay here till morning.

they are both fine and are virtually identical in meaning.

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Sorry, forgot the 'to' part. –  user17857 Jan 17 '12 at 1:55
I'm intrigued by virtually identical in meaning. I really can't think of any nuance of difference apart from a faint suggestion that the second version might be slightly more likely to occur as a "txt" message (saves a bit of typing! :) –  FumbleFingers Jan 17 '12 at 2:54
@Fumble: I wondered if anyone would catch that. –  Mitch Jan 17 '12 at 3:33

"You have stay here" is wrong and should be "You have to stay here" if talking about your obligation, or perhaps "You have stayed here" if talking about the past.

Choose whichever you prefer between "till the morning" and "till morning" (or "until morning" or "until the morning").

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I can't say wait til the morning. It may be ok but not for me. Til morning rolls off the tung better than til the morning.
Wait til tomorrow
Wait til Monday
The the just doesn't belong there. However, wait til the sun goes down ... then the the is needed. Otherwise, it feels wrong.

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