Word.ws English Dictionary

telling apart

telling apart is the present participle and gerund of tell apart.

Meaning of tell apart

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To perceive things as different, or to perceive their difference itself; to differentiate, distinguish, discriminate.
    • They are identical twins, and if they dress the same, everybody has trouble telling them apart.

Questions about telling apart

What is telling apart the present participle and gerund of?
Telling apart is the present participle and gerund of tell apart.

Words near telling apart in the dictionary

  1. tellinaceans
  2. telling
  3. telling a story
  4. telling against
  5. telling all
  6. telling apart
  7. telling bone
  8. telling bones
  9. telling fortunes
  10. telling it like it is
  11. telling it to the hand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: telling apart (page history and authors); tell apart (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: “telling apart.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/telling_apart. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.