Storytelling

How to spell storytelling

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce storytelling

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does storytelling mean?

1. nounThe activity or art of telling stories, whether for entertainment, teaching, or persuasion.

Storytelling in a sentence

• The workshop focused on storytelling techniques for business presentations.

• Oral storytelling kept the village history alive for generations.

Where does storytelling come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a transparent English compound, joining 'story' with 'telling'. 'Story' came into Middle English in the 1200s from Anglo-French estorie and ultimately from the Latin historia, meaning 'a written account of events' or 'an inquiry', which itself goes back to the Greek historia, 'a learning by inquiry'. 'Telling' is the native Old English contribution, from tellan, meaning 'to count, recount, or relate', a verb closely tied to the idea of counting out items one by one, which is why we still 'tell' a number on a clock and call a bank clerk a 'teller'. The two halves fused into a single noun describing the craft of narrating tales, a usage that became common in the nineteenth century. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: the joined word keeps both the double 'l' of 'tell' and the single 'r' of 'story', and writers sometimes hesitate over whether to hyphenate it (it is now usually written solid).

How the word is built

• story (a narrative)
• telling (from tell, to relate,
• -ing)