tale

[teyl] /teɪl/
noun
1.
a narrative that relates the details of some real or imaginary event, incident, or case; story:
a tale about Lincoln's dog.
2.
a literary composition having the form of such a narrative.
3.
a falsehood; lie.
4.
a rumor or piece of gossip, often malicious or untrue.
5.
the full number or amount.
6.
Archaic. enumeration; count.
7.
Obsolete. talk; discourse.
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.
Examples from the web for tale
  • The story of reading's development is a complex tale of equal parts human invention and neural plasticity.
  • But it holds this remarkable tale that should be a larger part of our shared national story.
  • Often the story that gets back around to the original story-teller does not resemble the original tale.
  • His story could be taken as a cautionary tale about selling out-or about not selling out quite enough.
  • The structure of the story was always that of a fairy tale.
  • Unfortunately, this insane story isn't a tale from a science-fiction novel.
  • At first glance, the book is a whimsical tale featuring dogs on roller skates and bicycles and skis.
  • So, now he is pressing on with another unusually told tale.
  • Here's a strange tale of two previously unrelated food products.
  • The book is part memoir and part cautionary tale about trying to change a culture.
British Dictionary definitions for tale

tale

/teɪl/
noun
1.
a report, narrative, or story
2.
one of a group of short stories connected by an overall narrative framework
3.
  1. a malicious or meddlesome rumour or piece of gossip: to bear tales against someone
  2. (in combination): talebearer, taleteller
4.
a fictitious or false statement
5.
tell tales
  1. to tell fanciful lies
  2. 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)
  1. a number; amount
  2. computation or enumeration
9.
an obsolete word for talk
Word Origin
Old English talu list; related to Old Frisian tele talk, Old Saxon, Old Norse tala talk, number, Old High German zala number
Word Origin and History for tale
n.

Old English talu "story, tale, the action of telling," from Proto-Germanic *talo (cf. Dutch taal "speech, language"), from PIE root *del- "to recount, count." The secondary English sense of "number, numerical reckoning" (c.1200) probably was the primary one in Germanic; cf. teller (see tell) and Old Frisian tale, Middle Dutch tal "number," Old Saxon tala "number," Old High German zala, German Zahl "number."

The ground sense of the Modern English 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 mid-14c.; first record of talebearer "tattletale" is late 15c.

Slang definitions & phrases for tale

tale

Related Terms

fish story


tale in Technology


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.

tale in the Bible

(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."

Idioms and Phrases with tale

tale

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