tell

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English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English tellen (“to count, tell”), from Old English tellan (“to count, tell”), from Proto-Germanic *taljaną, *talzijaną (“to count, enumerate”), from Proto-Germanic *talą, *talǭ (“number, counting”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol- (“calculation, fraud”). Cognate with English tally (“to count”), West Frisian telle (“to count”), West Frisian fertelle (“to tell, narrate”), Dutch tellen (“to count”), Low German tellen (“to count”) and förtellen (“to tell, narrate”), Old High German zellen (German zählen, “to count”), German erzählen (“to tell, recount”), Old Norse telja (Faroese telja, “to count, tell”). More at tale.

Verb

tell (third-person singular simple present tells, present participle telling, simple past and past participle told)

  1. (transitive) To count, reckon, or enumerate.
    • 1875, Hugh MacMillan, The Sunday Magazine:
      Only He who made them can tell the number of the stars, and mark the place of each in the order of the one great dominant spiral.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.vii:
      And in his lap a masse of coyne he told, / And turned vpsidowne, to feede his eye / A couetous desire with his huge threasury.
    All told, there were over a dozen.
    Can you tell time on a clock?
    He had untold wealth.
  2. (transitive) To narrate.
    I want to tell a story.
    I want to tell you a story.
  3. (transitive) To convey by speech; to say.
    Finally, someone told him the truth.
    He seems to like to tell lies.
  4. (transitive) To instruct or inform.
    Please tell me how to do it.
  5. (transitive) To order; to direct, to say to someone.
    Tell him to go away.
    • 2012 October 25, John Noble Wilford, “Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon, Dies at 82”, New York Times:
      Stability was restored, but once the re-entry propulsion was activated, the crew was told to prepare to come home before the end of their only day in orbit.
  6. (intransitive) To discern, notice, identify or distinguish.
    Can you tell whether those flowers are real or silk, from this distance?
    No, there's no way to tell.
  7. (transitive) To reveal.
    Time will tell what became of him.
  8. (intransitive) To be revealed.
    • 1990, Stephen Coonts, Under Siege, 1991 Pocket Books edition, ISBN 0671742949, page 409:
      Cherry looks old, Mergenthaler told himself. His age is telling. Querulous — that's the word. He's become a whining, querulous old man absorbed with trivialities.
  9. (intransitive) To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated.
    Sir Gerald was moving slower; his wounds were beginning to tell.
    • 1859 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
      Opinion ought... [to give] merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may hold... keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favour.
    • 2011 September 18, Ben Dirs, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia”, BBC Sport:
      But England's superior fitness told in the second half, with Delon Armitage, Manu Tuilagi and Chris Ashton (two) going over for tries to secure a bonus-point win.
Synonyms
Antonyms
  • (to instruct or inform): ask
Derived terms
Terms derived from tell (verb)
Translations
narrate — see narrate
to pass information
to instruct
to discern, notice, identify or distinguish
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Noun

tell (plural tells)

  1. A reflexive, often habitual behavior, especially one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold.
See also

Etymology 2

From Arabic تل (tall, “hill, elevation”), from Proto-Semitic *tall- (“hill”).

Noun

tell (plural tells)

  1. (archaeology) A mound, originally in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.

Statistics

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Last modified on 21 May 2013, at 16:35