5.140 end time

Similarly, if you want to say that a situation continues for some time and then stops, you can indicate the time when it stops by using the preposition 'until' with a time expression or an event.

• The school was kept open until ten o'clock five nights a week.
• They danced and laughed and talked until dawn.
• She walked back again and sat in her room until dinner.
• I've just discovered she's only here until Sunday.
• He had been willing to wait until the following summer.
• Until the third century A.D. female slaves were below the law.
• Until that meeting, most of us knew very little about him.

'Until' can also be used in negative clauses to say that something did not or will not happen before a particular time.

• We won't get them until September.
• My plane does not leave until tomorrow morning.
• No one I knew had cars until the twenties.
• It won't happen for many good months to come --- probably not until the spring.

'Until' can also be used with other prepositional phrases that indicate a point in time.

• The Count had resolved to wait until after Christmas to propose to Gertrude.

Some people use 'till' instead of 'until', especially in informal English.

• Sometimes I lie in bed till nine o'clock.

'Up to' and 'up till' are also sometimes used, mainly before 'now' and 'then'.

• Up to now the Warsaw pact had held the whole initiative.
• It was something he had never even considered up till now.
• I had a three-wheel bike up to a few years ago but it got harder and harder to push it along.

5.141

You can also use the preposition 'before' to indicate when a situation ends.

• Before 1716 Cheltenham had been a small market town.
• Before ten and after six the area is empty.