Word.ws English Dictionary

tells a story

tells a story is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tell a story.

Meaning of tell a story

Verb

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

  1. (ambitransitive, literally) To communicate a story in some way.
  2. (figuratively, intransitive, poetic) To display qualities which hint at or convey a past or history which is not explicitly told.
    • Every person's eyes tell their own story.
  3. To lie; to tell a lie
    • Jem gulped like a goldfish, hunched his shoulders and twitched his torso. “He’s goin‘ like that, only not like he means to.”
      “Are you telling me a story, Jem Finch?” Calpurnia’s voice hardened.
      “No Cal, I swear I’m not.”1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC

Questions about tells a story

What is tells a story the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Tells a story is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tell a story.

Words near tells a story in the dictionary

  1. Tellisford
  2. Tello
  3. tellopeptide
  4. Tellos
  5. tells
  6. tells a story
  7. tells against
  8. tells all
  9. tells apart
  10. tells fortunes
  11. tells it like it is

Source and license

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