Word.ws English Dictionary

tilling

tilling is the present participle and gerund of till.

Meaning of till

Verb

till (third-person singular simple present tills, present participle tilling, simple past and past participle tilled)

  1. (transitive) To develop so as to improve or prepare for usage; to cultivate (said of knowledge, virtue, mind etc.).
  2. (transitive) To work or cultivate or plough (soil); to prepare for growing vegetation and crops.
    • Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 3:23
  3. (intransitive) To cultivate soil.
  4. (obsolete) To prepare; to get.
    • Nor knowes a trappe nor snare to till1614, William Browne, The Shepherd's Pipe

See all 22 meanings of till

Noun (1)

tilling (plural tillings)

  1. The act of one who tills.
    • The farmer's field requires regular tillings.

Noun (2) capitalized: TILLING

TILLING

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, molecular biology) Acronym of targeting induced local lesions in genomes, a method that allows directed identification of mutations in a specific gene.

Proper noun capitalized: Tilling

Tilling

  1. A surname.

Forms of tilling

pluraltillings

Origin of tilling

From Middle English tillynge, tiliyng, tilyenge, tylynge, from Old English tiliende, tilġende, equivalent to till + -ing.

From Middle English tyllynge, tiling, tilinge, telynge, from Old English tilung, teolung, equivalent to till + -ing.

Questions about tilling

What does tilling mean?
Tilling means the act of one who tills.
What is tilling the present participle and gerund of?
Tilling is the present participle and gerund of till.
What part of speech is tilling?
Tilling can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of tilling?
The plural of tilling is tillings.

Words near tilling in the dictionary

  1. Tillie and Mac books
  2. tillie vallie
  3. tillies
  4. Tillietudlem
  5. Tilligerry Creek
  6. tilling
  7. Tillingham
  8. Tillinghast
  9. Tillinghasts
  10. tillings
  11. Tillington

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tilling (page history and authors); TILLING (page history and authors); Tilling (page history and authors); till (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “tilling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tilling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.