Does “until [date]” mean “before that date”?

Question

What does until mean in the following?

You need to deliver this product within 2 days (until August 18, 2011) to meet your deadline and get paid.

Does this mean that I have to deliver the product by 23:59 on 17 August 2011 or 23:59 on 18 August 2011? The order time is 21:04 on August 16 2011.

Answer 1

My default reading of that would be that you can deliver the product at any time on the 18th of August, 2011 and still be considered to have met your deadline.

If the deadline were 23:59 August 17, it would have been stated as "(before August 18, 2011)".

I will also note, though, that most people will consider "the end of the business day" rather than "the end of the day" to be the cutoff time, so you might be considered late if you turn it in after 17:00, if that's when your client normally closes their offices.

Answer 2

Coming from prehistoric German, "Till" passed into old English as meaning a goal or fixed point in either space or time. It is said by various websites to have been combined by contraction since the 13th century with the Norse word "und" (pronounced unt) which is said to come from the proto-Germanic word "wundō" which means "wound", but this really makes no sense. It makes much more sense that "till" would have been contracted with the Germanic word "und" (also pronounced unt) meaning "and". More or less, the two together would literally translate to "and to such point".

Therefore the statement "You have until March 1st to pay your rent of $100 to avoid eviction." would translate roughly to "At this present time have you a debt of $100. You may make payment at present and to such point as the date of March 1st to avoid eviction." The latter being quite tedious to say or write, has evolved.

In your example, "you must deliver your product within two days (and to be clear, you have from now and to such point as August 18, 2011) to meet your deadline and get paid." Technically, I suppose, it means you have to deliver the product by 23:59 on 17 August 2011, although a real deadline to a particular point in time should include the actual time. As no time was supplied, it might be compromised to be high noon August 18, 2011. I guarentee you though, it definitely means before the end of the business day August 18, 2011, whatever hour that may be, and more than likely does not mean until midnight the following day unless they have 24 hour receiving.

Answer 3

I don't think the example is a well worded condition; likely it was a typo/copy editing oversight.

Until--in the most literal sense--is a true condition that becomes false upon the occurrence of the target event. Using that definition, until Aug 18th would mean that your last possible moment to comply would be Aug 17th, 23:59:59.99.....

Answer 4

"until" doesn't really work in that context at all. A parenthetical clause in that sort of sentence usually indicates a restatement of the previous phrase in different terms in order to provide clarity. So let's replace the phrase in that sentence:

You need to deliver this product until August 18, 2011 to meet your deadline and get paid.

That would mean that you need to continually deliver it for two days. There are types of products where this is possible — running water comes to mind — but I doubt that is true in your case.

Regardless, "until August 18" and "within two days" are mutually exclusive phrases. They cannot mean the same thing.

I'd ask for clarification.

Answer 5

Until, which means up to, generally includes the specified moment.

The kidnappers have given us until October 11th to deliver the documents.