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tale
[ teyl ]
noun
- a narrative that relates the details of some real or imaginary event, incident, or case; story:
a tale about Lincoln's dog.
- a literary composition having the form of such a narrative.
- a falsehood; lie.
- a rumor or piece of gossip, often malicious or untrue.
- the full number or amount.
- Archaic. enumeration; count.
- Obsolete. talk; discourse.
tale
/ teɪl /
noun
- a report, narrative, or story
- one of a group of short stories connected by an overall narrative framework
- a malicious or meddlesome rumour or piece of gossip
to bear tales against someone
- ( in combination )
talebearer
taleteller
- a fictitious or false statement
- tell tales
- to tell fanciful lies
- to report malicious stories, trivial complaints, etc, esp to someone in authority
- tell a taleto reveal something important
- tell its own taleto be self-evident
- archaic.
- a number; amount
- computation or enumeration
- an obsolete word for talk
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Word History and Origins
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Word History and Origins
Origin of tale1
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Idioms and Phrases
see old wives' tale ; tall tale ; tell tales ; thereby hangs a tale .Discover More
Example Sentences
If tales are true, he’s one of the biggest bullies Washington has ever seen.
OZY and History’s newest podcast, The Food That Built America, tells the tale.
Through interviews with both of them and members of their families, Glaser is able to meticulously re-create their tale.
The tragedy, of course, is that Spears still can’t tell that tale herself.
In this 2018 book, Miller lets Circe take center stage, imagining what filled all the space between her appearances in ancient tales.
As an example of good science-and-society policymaking, the history of fluoride may be more of a cautionary tale.
Not that the demonstration had anything to do with this couple, whom Sarah seems to see as a fairy tale come to life.
Were the fairy-tale true it really would shame the affluent west.
Whilst Whitacre never defined himself as an “ally,” this remains a cautionary tale of what not to do.
Urban America is often portrayed as a tale of two kinds of places, those that “have it” and those who do not.
But he was ignorant of that part of the horrid tale; and the Duke, in a milder voice, bade him rise.
Never had Punch secured the telling of that tale with so little opposition.
The tailor of the fairy tale with his "seven at a blow" is not in it with the gunnery Lieutenant of a battleship.
Until very recently little has been known of the strange land in which the subject of this tale lives.
That was how I learnt the strangest tale that ever a man was told, and knew the miracle to which I owed my life.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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