Word.ws English Dictionary

William Tell

William Tell proper noun: the act of shooting an object off the top of a person's head.

Proper noun

William Tell

  1. (attributive) The act of shooting an object off the top of a person's head.
    • […] did a William Tell number on his wife, you know, with a glass of gin on her head […]2000, Jessica Treat, Not a Chance, page 25
    • According to Zornberg, "Rashi cites the midrash that presents the game the boys are playing as a kind of William Tell game, with Ishmael shooting arrows at Isaac and then claiming, 'But I am only playing.'"2005, Claire Elise Katz, Lara Trout, Emmanuel Levinas: Levinas and the question of religion (page 199)

Origin of William Tell

After the legendary Swiss folk hero said to have shot an apple off his son's head with an arrow.

Questions about William Tell

What does William Tell mean?
William Tell means the act of shooting an object off the top of a person's head.
What part of speech is William Tell?
William Tell is a proper noun.

Words near William Tell in the dictionary

  1. Willi Willi
  2. William
  3. William and Mary
  4. William McKinley
  5. William McKinleys
  6. William Tell
  7. William's Harbour
  8. william-nilliam
  9. Williamina
  10. Williamite
  11. Williamites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: William Tell (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: “William Tell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/william_tell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.