Word.ws English Dictionary

told a story

told a story is the simple past and past participle 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 told a story

What is told a story the simple past and past participle of?
Told a story is the simple past and past participle of tell a story.

Words near told a story in the dictionary

  1. tolcapone
  2. Tolchard
  3. tolciclate
  4. tolclofos-methyl
  5. told
  6. told a story
  7. told against
  8. told all
  9. told apart
  10. told fortunes
  11. told it like it is

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: told 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: “told a story.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/told_a_story. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.