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What does 'ten of six' mean in regard to time?

As a non-native speaker, I consider a quarter past nine (9:15) and a quarter to nine (8:45) easy to understand. However every time I hear "a quarter of nine", I have to pause for a few seconds and make sure I get it right.

How did this expression come about? How to explain it? I googled and the answer to this question on Yahoo! might be wrong.

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grokus
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    Google Ngrams shows that it's mainly used in the U.S. and not the U.K., and my guess is that it's regional. It sounds fine to me, but I believe I grew up hearing it from my mother (which would mean it's used in the Midwest). The Yahoo answer is wrong; "a quarter of nine" means 8:45. – Peter Shor Sep 07 '11 at 12:23
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    Mentally place the word 'short' and hear it as a 'quarter short of nine', it'll not rankle as much. – Autoresponder Sep 07 '11 at 12:41
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    Related: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/32678/8019 and http://english.stackexchange.com/q/6758/8019 – Tim Lymington Sep 07 '11 at 12:46
  • To confirm what @Peter said - I'm a UK native and have never heard of "a quarter of.." as a time reference – Waggers Sep 07 '11 at 12:58
  • @user11761: I'd prefer "shy of" to "short of," but it's ultimately a matter of taste. – Robusto Sep 07 '11 at 12:59
  • If you think that is illogical... have you heard "half nine"? – GEdgar Sep 07 '11 at 15:24
  • @Peter Shor, I'm pretty sure I have heard from people who have Northeast US accent or grew up in New England. So I'm not sure if this is only regional to the Midwest. – grokus Sep 07 '11 at 15:39
  • @grokus: the other question on this says it's used in the Northeast as well. – Peter Shor Sep 07 '11 at 17:53
  • Funnily, in some (not all!) regions of Germany, people call 8.15 "viertel Neun" ("quarter nine"), 8.30 "halb Neun" ("half nine"), and 8.45 "dreiviertel Neun" ("three quarters nine). In that line of thinking, "quarter of nine" would thus be 8.15 and not 8.45. – Torsten Schoeneberg Apr 06 '18 at 01:10

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Searching Google books shortly after 1800 (the time the phrase "quarter of" started coming into use in the U.S.), I find several usages of

It wanted a quarter of ten.

which makes more sense than just "quarter of ten", but is a cumbersome enough expression that one can see how it would be shortened to "quarter of ten". I didn't check all these books, but the one I did was published in the U.S.

Peter Shor
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