Word.ws English Dictionary

cautionary tales

cautionary tales is the plural of cautionary tale.

Meaning of cautionary tale

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

Questions about cautionary tales

What is cautionary tales the plural of?
Cautionary tales is the plural of cautionary tale.

Words near cautionary tales in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cautionary tales (page history and authors); cautionary tale (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 tales.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cautionary_tales. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.