HITHERTO

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does hitherto mean? 

• HITHERTO (adverb)
  The adverb HITHERTO has 1 sense:

1. used in negative statement to describe a situation that has existed up to this point or up to the present time

  Familiarity information: HITHERTO used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HITHERTO (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Used in negative statement to describe a situation that has existed up to this point or up to the present time

Synonyms:

as yet; heretofore; hitherto; so far; thus far; til now; until now; up to now; yet

Context example:

the sun isn't up yet

 Context examples 

No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Not knowing what to trust, I did not know what to do; and so had only to keep on working in what had hitherto been the groove of my life.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Captain Harville was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Captain Wentworth's hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had hitherto restrained me in my communications with him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the more overcome by Miss Crawford's.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The play concluded—the curtain fell—Henry Tilney was no longer to be seen where he had hitherto sat, but his father remained, and perhaps he might be now coming round to their box.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

As she arrived at right angles to the sea, the full force of the wind (from which we had hitherto run away) caught us.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Hitherto I had been acting, and action had numbed thought.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to courts, for which I was unqualified by the meanness of my condition.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)