Word.ws English Dictionary

living to tell the tale

living to tell the tale is the present participle and gerund 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 living to tell the tale

What is living to tell the tale the present participle and gerund of?
Living to tell the tale is the present participle and gerund of live to tell the tale.

Words near living to tell the tale in the dictionary

  1. living through
  2. living tissue
  3. living tissues
  4. living to fight another day
  5. living to regret
  6. living to tell the tale
  7. living together
  8. living tree doctrine
  9. living trust
  10. living trusts
  11. living under a rock

Source and license

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