tale

Origin:
before 900; Middle English; Old English talu series, list, narrative, story; cognate with Dutch taal speech, language, German Zahl number, Old Norse tala number, speech. See tell¹

Can be confused: tail, tale.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To tale

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Tale is always a great word to know.

So is callithumpian. Does it mean:

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

tale (teɪl)

—n
1.	a report, narrative, or story
2.	one of a group of short stories connected by an overall narrative framework
3.	a. a malicious or meddlesome rumour or piece of gossip: to bear tales against someone
	b. (in combination): talebearer; taleteller
4.	a fictitious or false statement
5.	tell tales
	a. to tell fanciful lies
	b. to report malicious stories, trivial complaints, etc, esp to someone in authority
6.	tell a tale to reveal something important
7.	tell its own tale to be self-evident
8.	archaic
	a. a number; amount
	b. computation or enumeration
9.	an obsolete word for talk

[Old English talu list; related to Old Frisian tele talk, Old Saxon, Old Norse tala talk, number, Old High German zala number]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

tale

O.E. talu "story, tale, the action of telling," from P.Gmc. *talo (cf. Du. taal "speech, language"), from PIE base *del- "to recount, count." The secondary Eng. sense of "number, numerical reckoning" (c.1200) probably was the primary one in Gmc., cf. teller (see tell) and

O.Fris. tale, M.Du. tal "number," O.S. tala "number," O.H.G. zala, Ger. Zahl "number." The ground sense of the Mod.Eng. word in its main meaning, then, might have been "an account of things in their due order." Related to talk and tell. Meaning "things divulged that were given secretly, gossip" is from c.1350; first record of talebearer "tattletale" is 1478.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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FOLDOC

Computing Dictionary

TALE definition

Typed Applicative Language Experiment. M. van Leeuwen. Lazy, purely applicative, polymorphic. Based on typed second order lambda-calculus. "Functional Programming and the Language TALE", H.P. Barendregt et al, in Current Trends in Concurrency, LNCS 224, Springer 1986, pp.122-207.

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © Denis Howe 2010 http://foldoc.org
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Easton

Bible Dictionary

Tale definition

(1.) Heb. tokhen, "a task," as weighed and measured out = tally, i.e., the number told off; the full number (Ex. 5:18; see 1 Sam. 18:27; 1 Chr. 9:28). In Ezek. 45:11 rendered "measure." (2.) Heb. hegeh, "a thought;" "meditation" (Ps. 90:9); meaning properly "as a whisper of sadness," which is soon over, or "as a thought." The LXX. and Vulgate render it "spider;" the Authorized Version and Revised Version, "as a tale" that is told. In Job 37:2 this word is rendered "sound;" Revised Version margin, "muttering;" and in Ezek. 2:10, "mourning."

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

tale

see old wives' tale; tall tale; tell tales; thereby hangs a tale.