Word.ws English Dictionary

telling on

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

Meaning of tell on

Verb

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

  1. (childish, usually) To inform on, to rat out; to tell a person in authority that someone else has done something wrong.
    • My sister told on me when I didn't go to school.
    Synonyms:
    bewray
  2. To cause visible strain to.
    • Years of drinking started to tell on his body.

Questions about telling on

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

Words near telling on in the dictionary

  1. telling it to the hand
  2. telling its own tale
  3. telling noses
  4. telling of
  5. telling off
  6. telling on
  7. telling someone where to get off
  8. telling someone where to shove it
  9. telling tales
  10. telling tales out of school
  11. telling the time

Source and license

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