Word.ws English Dictionary

lives to tell the tale

lives to tell the tale is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 lives to tell the tale

What is lives to tell the tale the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Lives to tell the tale is the third-person singular simple present indicative of live to tell the tale.

Words near lives to tell the tale in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lives 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: “lives to tell the tale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lives_to_tell_the_tale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.