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tiller

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Etymology and origin of the English word tiller

Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈtɪlə/[1]
  • US: /ˈtɪlɚ/[1]

tiller1 shoot, sapling

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Inherited
First attested
Blickling Glosses
Inherited from
Old English telgor
Ultimate origin
Proto-Germanic *telgōn

Etymology

The word for the shoot is apparently inherited from Old English telgor (“plant, shoot, twig”), also tealgor and telgra,[2][3][4][5] extended forms of telga (“branch, bough, twig”).[2][6][7] The OED calls the link only apparent, because the word is not found in English between 1100 and 1660 and its sound history is obscure.[2] Its cognates are Old Norse tjalga (“thin twig”), Dutch telg, Middle Low German telg, Middle High German zelch and Old High German zelga,[2][4][5] from a Germanic stem that the OED and Köbler give as Proto-Germanic *telgōn.[2][8] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also compares telgja (“to shape by hewing”) and Latin dolāre (“to hew”),[4] and Klein and Orel compare Lithuanian dalgis (“scythe”).[5][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A plant, shoot or twig, in Old English: the OED's first record is in the Blickling Glosses,[2] and Bosworth–Toller quotes the Old English Genesis, On ðam dæge ðe God geworhte ǽlcne telgor on eorðan, where the word renders Latin virgultum.[3]

Semantic evolution

After its Old English use the word disappears from the record, and it returns in the 17th century with a narrower sense of forestry and farming.[2] Evelyn's Sylva (1664) uses it of a young tree, especially one rising from the stock of a felled tree,[2][7] and in 1733 Tull's Horse-hoing Husbandry applies it to a side shoot from the base of a stalk of corn or grass, now the main sense.[2][6] The verb, formed from the noun, is recorded from 1677, in Plot's Natural History of Oxford-shire.[2][4] Wright found the word across Scotland and England, with spellings such as teller, tellow and telly,[10] and the OED thinks tellow and tillow may continue the simple telga.[2]

Timeline

  • Old English – a plant, shoot or twig (obsolete).[2][3]
  • 1664 – a young tree, a sapling.[2]
  • 1677 – verb, of corn and other plants, to put out side shoots.[2][4]
  • 1733 – a side shoot from the base of a stalk of corn or grass.[2]
  • 1787 – verb, transitive, to throw out stalks by tillering.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A side shoot that grows from the base of the stem of a grass or cereal: The barley put out several tillers after the rain.[11][4][2]
  2. A young tree; a sapling, especially one rising from the stool of a felled tree.[11][4][2]

Verb

  1. Of a plant, to send out tillers: Thinly sown oats tiller well.[11][4][2]

tiller2 one who tills

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
c. 1250
Ultimate origin
Old English tilian

Etymology

The word for one who tills is formed from Middle English tilien + -ere,[4][2] which took the place of Old English tilia, from tilian (“to till”).[2][6] It was afterwards spelled to match the verb till.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who works the soil: Etymonline dates tillere to the middle of the 13th century,[12] Dictionary.com to 1200–50,[13] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 13th century.[4] The OED's first quotation is from a Life of Jesus of about 1300.[2]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed close to the verb, extending from the soil to anyone who raises a crop or plant.[2] Johnson (1755) glossed it "husbandman; ploughman", with the verse of Genesis calling Cain a tiller of the ground.[14] The Shorter Oxford now marks this sense as archaic or literary, and adds a mid-20th-century sense, a machine that breaks up the soil.[6]

Timeline

  • mid-13th century – one who cultivates the soil, as tillere.[12] The OED's first quotation is of about 1300.[2]
  • mid-20th century – a machine for breaking up soil.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A person who tills the soil; a farmer or husbandman.[4][2][6]
  2. An implement or machine for breaking up soil; a mechanical cultivator.[4][6]

tiller3 steering lever

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1353
Borrowed from
Anglo-Norman telier via Middle English
Ultimate origin
Latin tēla

Etymology

The word for the steering lever is inherited from Middle English teler, also tiler,[15][5] borrowed from Anglo-Norman telier (“weaver's beam, stock of a crossbow”),[6][7][16] and Old French telier, recorded before 1200,[2][12] from Medieval Latin tēlārium,[2][12][15] from Latin tēla (“web, loom”).[2][12][17] The Latin noun stands for *texlā and belongs with texō (“to weave”),[17][5] and the American Heritage Dictionary refers it to Proto-Indo-European *teks-.[18]

Earliest recorded meaning

The stock of a weapon, a use Old French already had for the crossbow.[12][17] The OED first dates the stock of an early hand gun to 1353,[2] and the Middle English Dictionary has crossbows without teilers in 1361 and, with an emended reading, teleres for guns in 1339.[15] Barnhart gives a form tilier from before 1325.[17]

Semantic evolution

The loom's beam gave the name to the long beam of a crossbow, grooved for the arrow or bored for the bolt,[2][6] then to the stock of the first hand guns.[2][15] Cotgrave still used tillar for the crossbow part, explaining French arbrier.[19] Most dictionaries first date the boat's lever to before 1625, in Mainwaring's Nomenclator Navalis,[2][17][12][4] but the Middle English Dictionary has le teler dun helm in a record of 1390.[15] Barnhart and Weekley note that this use grew up in English, since the French word for the lever is French barre.[17][19] In archery the word also came to mean a notched piece of wood for bending a bow while it is shaped, recorded from 1545 in Ascham's Toxophilus.[2][6][4] In dialect it was also a wagon brake in Northumberland, the handle of a pit-saw in Worcestershire and Wiltshire, and the handle of a spade or shovel in East Anglia.[10]

Timeline

  • 1353 – the stock of an early hand gun.[2]
  • 1361 – the stock of a crossbow, as teilers.[15] The OED first quotes this sense from Lydgate, 1412–20.[2]
  • 1390 – a lever for steering a boat.[15] The OED first has it before 1625.[2][17]
  • 1545 – in archery, a device for bending and balancing a bow.[2][6]
  • 1590 – a stock fixed to a longbow so that it can be used like a crossbow (obsolete by 1620).[2]
  • 1630 – various technical uses.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A lever fixed to the head of a boat's rudder and used to steer: She pushed the tiller over and the dinghy came about.[11][4][2]
  2. In archery, a notched stick that holds a bow drawn while it is being shaped.[4][6]
  3. (obsolete, 1412–1618) The wooden stock of a crossbow.[2][6][15]

Verb

  1. In archery, to shape a bow to the correct curve.[4]

Word family

  • tillerless
  • tillerman

Usage notes

Two rarer words are spelled the same way: tiller, a till for money, recorded in Dryden in 1693 and later in Scots,[2][10] and, in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, the shaft-horse of a wagon.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  9. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  11. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  12. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  16. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  17. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  18. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  19. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray

Related etymologies

  • rend · also from Old English
  • sinew · also from Old English
  • harmless · also from Old English
  • mattock · also from Old English
  • most · also from Old English
  • grope · also from Old English
  • clothe · also from Old English
  • sheaf · also from Old English
Cite this entry

“Tiller.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/tiller. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

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