You’re going camping and want to borrow a friend’s tent over the weekend. So you say: “Could I have it ______ Friday afternoon? We’re leaving on Friday after work.”
Until or by?
- Until means from now until then.
- By, used for deadlines, means not later than then.
- By… at the latest!
- Imagine: If you said “until Friday”, your friend might say “Sure, until Friday is fine. But I need it on Saturday, so can you come round on Saturday morning to drop it off?”
- Here’s an exercise on using “until” and “by”, with a pdf.
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These were your answers:
* by (88%, 7 votes)
* until (12%, 1 votes)
Left by Anne on July 12th, 2010
[...] made up this chart and the one for until/by a few years ago and get a lot of mileage out of them. I’ll post some more as the summer [...]
Left by The Island Weekly » Blog Archive » Grammar Guru: for or since? on July 12th, 2010