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tell

verb · noun

Simple meaning

Inform positively and with certainty and confidence.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

tehl
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈtɛl

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

  1. Inform positively and with certainty and confidence

    “I tell you that man is a crook!”

  2. transitiveditransitive

    To convey by speech; to say.

  3. Narrate or give a detailed account of

  4. transitiveditransitive

    To narrate, to recount.

  5. transitive

    To instruct or inform.

  6. transitive

    To order; to direct, to say to someone.

noun

  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.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Inform positively and with certainty and confidence

Used this way, tell is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Heard in a sentence
“I tell you that man is a crook!”
Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • differentiate , a specialist term, precise but narrower

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use tell

  • “I tell you that man is a crook!”verb
  • “He could tell that she was unhappy.”verb
  • “Tell them that you will be late.”verb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

now tell

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • tellingnounInflected form

    An act of narration.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

  • tellynounDerived noun · specialist

    An electronic device that receives television signals and displays them on a screen.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • tell offverbCompound term

    Reprimand.

  • tell onverbCompound term

    Give away information about somebody.

  • tell apartverbCompound term

    Detect with the senses.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: inform positively and with certainty and confidence

narratesay

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.