tale

Topic: LITERATURE

Language:	Old English
Origin:	talu

tale
noun

tale W3 See pronunciation table in "How to use dictionary" pages

[countable]

1AL a story about exciting imaginary events

tale of

tales of adventure

a book of old Japanese folk tales (=traditional stories)

a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen

a cautionary tale (=one that is told to warn people about the dangers of something )

2 a description of interesting or exciting things that happened to someone, often one which is not completely true about every detail

tale of/about

tales of her life in post-war Berlin

tale of/about how

He was in the middle of telling me a long tale about how he once met the Redskins' manager.

British English to tell someone in authority about something wrong that someone else has done [= tattle American English]

tell tales to

Don't go telling tales to the teacher!

a) a description of events that made you unhappy

b) a series of bad things that happened to someone:

The England team's tale of woe continued, and they lost the next three games.

Definition of tale from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English within
the topic LITERATURE