tale

 
Pronunciation: /teɪl/

noun

  • 1a fictitious or true narrative or story, especially one that is imaginatively recounted: a delightful children’s tale tales of witches and warlocks she enjoyed hearing others tell their tales
  • a lie.
  • 2 archaic a number or total: an exact tale of the dead bodies

Phrases

a tale of a tub

archaic an apocryphal story.

tell tales

gossip about or reveal another person’s secrets or wrongdoings: she sparked a family row after telling tales about her mother on a TV show

Origin:

Old English talu 'telling, something told', of Germanic origin; related to Dutch taal 'speech' and German Zahl 'number', also to tell1. tale (sense 2) is probably from Old Norse