Word.ws English Dictionary

tell the difference

tell the difference verb: to differentiate similar things.

Verb

tell the difference (third-person singular simple present tells the difference, present participle telling the difference, simple past and past participle told the difference)

  1. To differentiate similar things.
    • Can you tell the difference between margarine and butter?

Forms of tell the difference

third-person singular presenttells the difference
present participletelling the difference
past participletold the difference
pasttold the difference

Questions about tell the difference

What does tell the difference mean?
Tell the difference means to differentiate similar things.
What part of speech is tell the difference?
Tell the difference is a verb.
What is the past tense of tell the difference?
The past tense of tell the difference is told the difference.

Words near tell the difference in the dictionary

  1. tell stories
  2. tell story
  3. tell tale
  4. tell tales
  5. tell tales out of school
  6. tell the difference
  7. tell the time
  8. tell the truth
  9. tell the truth and shame the devil
  10. tell time
  11. tell us another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tell the difference (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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