Word.ws English Dictionary

told tales

told tales is the simple past and past participle of tell tales.

Meaning of tell tales

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To lie, to be making false claims.
    • Don't listen to him; he's telling tales.
  2. (UK) To report someone for a wrongdoing.

Questions about told tales

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

Words near told tales in the dictionary

  1. told of
  2. told off
  3. told on
  4. told someone where to get off
  5. told someone where to shove it
  6. told tales
  7. told tales out of school
  8. told the time
  9. told the truth
  10. told the truth and shamed the devil
  11. told time

Source and license

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