tell

English Online Dictionary. What means tell‎? What does tell mean?

English

Pronunciation

• (UK, General American) enPR: tĕl, IPA^(key): /tɛl/, [tʰɛl], [tʰɛɫ]
• Rhymes: -ɛl

Etymology 1

From Middle English tellen (“to count, tell”), from Old English tellan (“to count, tell”), from Proto-West Germanic *talljan, from Proto-Germanic *taljaną, *talzijaną (“to count, enumerate”), from Proto-Germanic *talą, *talǭ (“number, counting”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol- (“calculation, fraud”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian tälle (“to say; tell”), West Frisian telle (“to count”), West Frisian fertelle (“to tell, narrate”), Dutch tellen (“to count”) and Dutch vertellen (“to tell”), Low German tellen (“to count”), German zählen, Faroese telja. More at tale.

Verb

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

1. (transitive, archaic outside of idioms) To count, reckon, or enumerate.
2. (transitive, ditransitive) To narrate, to recount.
3. (transitive, ditransitive) To convey by speech; to say.
   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     Tell her you’re here.

4. (transitive) To instruct or inform.
5. (transitive) To order; to direct, to say to someone.
6. (transitive or intransitive) To discern, notice, identify or distinguish.
7. (transitive) To reveal.

8. (intransitive) To be revealed.
   • 1990, Stephen Coonts, Under Siege, 1991 Pocket Books edition, →ISBN, p.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.
10. (transitive) To use (beads or similar objects) as an aid to prayer.
11. (intransitive, childish) To inform someone in authority about a wrongdoing.

    Synonym: tell on

12. (authorship, intransitive) To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement — contrasted with show.

Usage notes

• In dialects, other past tense forms (besides told) may be found, including tald/tauld (Scotland), tawld (Devonshire), teld (Yorkshire, Devonshire), telled (Northern England, Scotland, and in nonstandard speech generally), telt (Scotland, Geordie), tole (AAVE, Southern US, and some dialects of England), toll (AAVE), tolt (AAVE).

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (enumerate): count, number; see also Thesaurus:count
• (narrate): narrate, recount, relate
• (to instruct or inform): advise, apprise; See also Thesaurus:inform
• (reveal): disclose, make known; See also Thesaurus:divulge
• (inform someone in authority): grass up, snitch, tattle; See also Thesaurus:rat out

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “to instruct or inform”): ask

Derived terms

Translations

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.
2. (informal) A giveaway; something that unintentionally reveals or hints at a secret.
3. (archaic) That which is told; a tale or account.
   • April 4, 1743, Horace Walpole, letter to Sir Horace Mann

     I am at the end of my tell.

4. (Internet) A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper.

See also

• dead giveaway

Etymology 2

From Arabic تَلّ (tall, “hill, elevation”) or Hebrew תֵּל (tél, “hill”), from Proto-Semitic *tall- (“hill”).

Noun

tell (plural tells)

2. (archaeology) A hill or mound, originally and especially in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.

Translations

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

tell

1. imperative of telle

Yola

Preposition

tell

1. Alternative form of del

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 84