12

Today I saw this word — hitherto — then I searched in the dictionary to find that it means "up until that time". It looks a little weird since my first seen, and I rarely see words ending with ‑to except to, auto and tomato which look more normal.

I found all words ending with to from here, but this site only says words ending with to are good for playing "Words with Friends" word game. Maybe because my native language is not English, I know almost nothing about all the words listed on that site, so I wonder if the ending ‑to has some common special meaning? If yes, it can help me to remember the words that end with to.

Improve this question
2
  • 2
    "What does the 'to' ending mean?" It means ... to. :) Explained in answer below.
    – Fattie
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 17:40
  • "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
    – paddotk
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 23:57

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
32

I’m not sure what you mean by asking what the meaning of words that end in -to is, because -to is not really an English suffix in the general case. As you note, it occurs in many words with no overlap in sense, like alto, auto, biscotto, burrito, canto, cornetto, ghetto, grotto, potato, lotto, magneto, mosquito, panto, photo, presto, recto, veto. Many of those derive from Latin or its children, but their -to has no meaning of its own.

Nonetheless, for your case of the adverb hitherto, there actually is something here behind it. Just as with adverbs like today, tonight, and tomorrow, the to part was originally part of a longer adverbial phrase involving a preposition that was originally worn down into a single word in examples like hereto, hereunto, hitherto, hitherunto, thereinto, thereonto, thereto, thereunto, thitherto, whereinto, whereto, whereunto, and whitherto.

In all those, to represents what was once the preposition to.

Improve this answer
2
  • 3
    In some cases the -to (or more precise: the -o) in Latin resp. Italian based words comes from an ending of -us or -um, resp. -o: alt-o from Latin altus, cornett-o, from the Italian diminutive of corno etc.
    – Peter - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 12:57
  • This implies that, e.g. hereunto is a compound of "hereun to" when it is actually a compound of "here unto". In several of these words, to is really just part of unto, onto, or into. Not so bad with into or onto, which are themselves compounds of "in to" and "on to" respectively. But confusing with unto, which does not break into pieces.
    – Brythan
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 6:32
9

A good test is to see whether you can break off the "to" and still have a valid word. In the case of "tomato" and similar words, you can't: "toma" isn't a word, so the "to" you broke off isn't either.

But "hither" is a word ("in this direction"), so the "to" is also. In combination they don't necessarily have a meaning that can be predicted from the meanings of their parts, but there's usually at least a distant relationship.

Improve this answer
1

The answer is, it means "to".

Note that you can use "to" with times.

So, "I'm at work 9 to 5".

It's that simple.

"Hither" basically means "towards", "up to", "that side of".

"Hither to" just means "up to that time".

The "to" part simply means "to", as in "up to" or "through to" or "9 to 5".

As others have explained, there is no general case; it's not "a suffix".

Improve this answer
2
  • Hereto, thereto, unto: it really is.
    – Tim Lymington
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 17:34
  • 3
    Hi Tim .. no big deal but just as TJL said, "To" is not a general case suffix; in most words it has no special meaning." For example, "day" is not a suffix, even though there are three or four compound-words (today, yesterday, etc). An actual suffix or prefix, you can run around adding hither and yon, and it works. "-to" is not a suffix.
    – Fattie
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 17:38
0

"To" is not a general case suffix; in most words it has no special meaning.

The list you've found is for a specific strategy in Words with Friends/Scrabble. They recommend watching for words on that list because they're easy to expand on with two relatively common tiles, T and O.

To use your example word, if your opponent plays HITHER, you could add TO on the end and get HITHERTO. You would score the same points they did, plus a few extra because your word is longer, and only used two tiles to do it.

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    In this case, to is a suffix. As in thereto, etc. (see tchrists's answer for more); and more commonly, onto.
    – TonyK
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 14:00
  • I'm not sure the idea of simply appending "to" to something your opponent played is a good idea (except as a last resort). It's not like adding "s" where you can start a new word going in another direction; since you're adding two letters you're pretty much stuck with that...
    – A C
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 15:25
  • @AC I'm not saying it's a good strategy, a proper discussion of Scrabble tactics is very off-topic for this stack, it's just the one the original poster's linked list is meant to use.
    – T.J.L.
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 16:20
  • To the people with the down votes, I'd like to point out that (so far) none of the other answers address the source of the original poster's query. My answer is deliberately avoiding a frame change/challenge.
    – T.J.L.
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 16:22

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.