Word.ws English Dictionary

cautionary tale

cautionary tale noun: a story, originally told in folklore, to warn its audience of a certain danger.

Noun

cautionary tale (plural cautionary tales)

  1. (idiomatic) A story, originally told in folklore, to warn its audience of a certain danger.
    • This tone has slowly given way to a realization that the country’s experience might be less a curiosity than a cautionary tale.2018 November 13, Kate Julian, “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?”, in The Atlantic
    • And Harford’s book, of course, has more than a decade of fresh cautionary tales from our troubled era of social media, big data, algorithmic mayhem, and “alternative facts” on which to draw.2020 November 17, Ben Chu, “Review: How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford”, in The Independent, retrieved 13 Jan 2021

cautionary tale meaning in Tamil

cautionary tale in Tamil

எச்சரிக்கை கதை

Forms of cautionary tale

pluralcautionary tales

Questions about cautionary tale

What does cautionary tale mean?
Cautionary tale means a story, originally told in folklore, to warn its audience of a certain danger.
What is cautionary tale in Tamil?
Cautionary tale in Tamil is எச்சரிக்கை கதை. See Cautionary tale meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is cautionary tale?
Cautionary tale is a noun.
What is the plural of cautionary tale?
The plural of cautionary tale is cautionary tales.

Words near cautionary tale in the dictionary

  1. cautionally
  2. cautionaries
  3. cautionary
  4. cautionary block
  5. cautionary blocks
  6. cautionary tale
  7. cautionary tales
  8. cautioned
  9. cautioner
  10. cautioners
  11. cautioneth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cautionary tale (page history and authors); cautionary tale (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cautionary tale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cautionary_tale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.