Tale

How to spell tale

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tale

What does tale mean?

1. nounA story, whether true or invented, that is told or written.

Tale in a sentence

• The old sailor told a gripping tale about a shipwreck.

• Her grandmother wrote down every folk tale from the village.

Where does tale come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Tale comes from the Old English talu, which meant a story, an account, or a reckoning, and it sits among the oldest layers of the English vocabulary. The same Germanic root produced the modern verb 'tell' and the noun 'number' in some of its relatives, so an original sense of counting and recounting runs through the whole family; the Dutch 'taal' (language) and German 'Zahl' (number) are close cousins. For centuries 'tale' could mean both a narrative and a tally or count, which is why a bank teller (one who counts money) and a story-teller share the same ancestor. The narrative meaning gradually became dominant, leaving the counting sense to fade. Crucially for spellers, 'tale' is a homophone of 'tail', the appendage; the two words have entirely separate origins, so the safest memory trick is to link the 'tale' spelling to 'tell' and 'tale-telling'.

How the word is built

• tale (from Old English talu: story, account, telling)

Words that sound like tale

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• tail: The hindmost part of an animal's body, or the rear section of an object.