Word.ws English Dictionary

lived to tell the tale

lived to tell the tale is the simple past and past participle of live to tell the tale.

Meaning of live to tell the tale

Verb

live to tell the tale (third-person singular simple present lives to tell the tale, present participle living to tell the tale, simple past and past participle lived to tell the tale)

  1. (idiomatic, informal, literary) To survive some difficulty, illness, etc.
    • Living with gun violence can desensitize you. Humor was our coping mechanism, designed to keep complex emotions at bay. I’m ashamed to say that I made fun of family members who were shot and lived to tell the tale.2019 August 25, Lisa Page, “My Family’s Gun Wounds: A Tale in Three Acts”, in The Atlantic

Questions about lived to tell the tale

What is lived to tell the tale the simple past and past participle of?
Lived to tell the tale is the simple past and past participle of live to tell the tale.

Words near lived to tell the tale in the dictionary

  1. lived through
  2. lived time
  3. lived times
  4. lived to fight another day
  5. lived to regret
  6. lived to tell the tale
  7. lived together
  8. lived under a rock
  9. lived up
  10. lived with
  11. lived with one's wife's family

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lived to tell the tale (page history and authors); live to tell the 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: “lived to tell the tale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lived_to_tell_the_tale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.