Word.ws English Dictionary

tell you the truth

tell you the truth phrase: used to positively assert the frank honesty of an associated statement of set of statements; equivalent to "to you tell the truth".

Phrase

tell you the truth

  1. (idiomatic, informal) Used to positively assert the frank honesty of an associated statement of set of statements; equivalent to "to you tell the truth".
    • "What's the point? Your buddies can kick back and relax. I'm going into voluntary retirement." / "Oh?" / "Tell you the truth, I was getting a little tired of Jim Shorter. Tired of that little room on Ninety-fourth Street. You know what I might do? I might leave town."1994, Lawrence Block, A Long Line of Dead Men

Synonyms of tell you the truth

Questions about tell you the truth

What does tell you the truth mean?
Tell you the truth means used to positively assert the frank honesty of an associated statement of set of statements; equivalent to "to you tell the truth".
What part of speech is tell you the truth?
Tell you the truth is a phrase.

Words near tell you the truth in the dictionary

  1. tell the truth and shame the devil
  2. tell time
  3. tell us another
  4. tell us another one
  5. tell volumes
  6. tell you the truth
  7. tell you what
  8. tell-a-story
  9. tell-all
  10. tell-alls
  11. tell-tale

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tell you the truth (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-tell you the truth.ogg.

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