different between tell vs out

English

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) enPR: t?l, IPA^(key): /t?l/, /t??/
• Rhymes: -?l

Etymology 1

From Middle English tellen (“to count, tell”), from Old English tellan (“to count, tell”), from Proto-Germanic *taljan?, *talzijan? (“to count, enumerate”), from Proto-Germanic *tal?, *tal? (“number, counting”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol- (“calculation, fraud”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian tälle (“to say; tell”), West Frisian telle (“to count”), West Frisian fertelle (“to tell, narrate”), Dutch tellen (“to count”), Low German tellen (“to count”), German zählen, Faroese telja. More at tale.

Verb

tell (third-person singular simple present tells, present participle telling, simple past and past participle told)

1. (transitive, archaic outside of idioms) To count, reckon, or enumerate.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.vii:

     And in his lap a masse of coyne he told, / And turned vpsidowne, to feede his eye / A couetous desire with his huge threasury.

   • 1875, Hugh MacMillan, The Sunday Magazine:

     Only He who made them can tell the number of the stars, and mark the place of each in the order of the one great dominant spiral.

2. (transitive) To narrate.
   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     Tell her you’re here.

3. (transitive) To convey by speech; to say.
4. (transitive) To instruct or inform.
   • 1611, Bible (King James Version), Genesis xii. 18

     Why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
5. (transitive) To order; to direct, to say to someone.
   • 1909, H. G. Wells, Ann Veronica

     She said she hoped she had not distressed him by the course she had felt obliged to take, and he told her not to be a fool.

   • Stability was restored, but once the re-entry propulsion was activated, the crew was told to prepare to come home before the end of their only day in orbit.

6. (intransitive) To discern, notice, identify or distinguish.

   • Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.

7. (transitive) To reveal.

8. (intransitive) To be revealed.
   • 1990, Stephen Coonts, Under Siege, 1991 Pocket Books edition, ?ISBN, p.409:

     Cherry looks old, Mergenthaler told himself. His age is telling. Querulous — that's the word. He's become a whining, querulous old man absorbed with trivialities.

9. (intransitive) To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated.
   • 1859 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

     Opinion ought [… to give] merited honour to every one, whatever opinion he may hold […] keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favour.
10. (transitive) To use (beads or similar objects) as an aid to prayer.
11. (intransitive, childish) To inform someone in authority about a wrongdoing.

    I saw you steal those sweets! I'm going to tell!

12. (authorship, intransitive) To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement -- contrasted with show

    Maria rewrote the section of her novel that talked about Meg and Sage's friendship to have less telling and more showing.

Usage notes

• In dialects, other past tense forms (besides told) may be found, including tald/tauld (Scotland), tawld (Devonshire), teld (Yorkshire, Devonshire), telled (Northern England, Scotland, and in nonstandard speech generally), telt (Scotland, Geordie), tole (AAVE, Southern US, and some dialects of England), toll (AAVE), tolt (AAVE).
• In older forms of English, when the pronoun thou was in active use, and verbs used -est for distinct second-person singular indicative forms, the verb tell had the form tellest, and had toldest for its past tense.
• Similarly, when the ending -eth was in active use for third-person singular present indicative forms, the form telleth was used.

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (enumerate): count, number; see also Thesaurus:count
• (narrate): narrate, recount, relate
• (to instruct or inform): advise, apprise; See also Thesaurus:inform
• (reveal): disclose, make known; See also Thesaurus:divulge
• (inform someone in authority): grass up, snitch, tattle; See also Thesaurus:rat out

Antonyms

• (to instruct or inform): ask

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

tell (plural tells)

1. A reflexive, often habitual behavior, especially one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold.
2. (archaic) That which is told; a tale or account.
   • April 4, 1743, Horace Walpole, letter to Sir Horace Mann

     I am at the end of my tell.

3. (Internet) A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper.

See also

• dead giveaway

Etymology 2

From Arabic ????? (tall, “hill, elevation”) or Hebrew ????? (tél, “hill”), from Proto-Semitic *tall- (“hill”).

Noun

tell (plural tells)

1. (archaeology) A hill or mound, originally and especially in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements.

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

tell

1. imperative of telle

English

Alternative forms

• oute (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English out, oute, from a combination of Old English ?t (“out”, preposition & adverb), from Proto-Germanic *?t (“out”); and Old English ?te (“outside; without”, adverb), from Proto-Germanic *?tai (“out; outside”); both from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“upwards, away”).

Cognate with Scots oot, out (“out”), Saterland Frisian uut, uute (“out”), West Frisian út (“out”), Dutch uit (“out”), German Low German ut (“out”), German aus (“out”), Norwegian/Swedish ut, ute (“out; outside”), Danish ud, ude (“out; outside”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: out, IPA^(key): /a?t/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /æ?t/, /æ?t/
• (Canada) IPA^(key): /??t/
• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /??t/
• Rhymes: -a?t

Adverb

out (not comparable)

1. Away from the inside, centre or other point of reference.

   The magician tapped the hat, and a rabbit jumped out.

   Once they had landed, the commandos quickly spread out along the beach.

   For six hours the tide flows out, then for six hours it flows in.

2. Away from home or one's usual place.

   Let's eat out tonight

3. Outside; not indoors.

   Last night we slept out under the stars.

4. Away from; at a distance.

   Keep out!

5. Into a state of non-operation or non-existence.

   Turn the lights out.

   Put the fire out.

   I painted out that nasty mark on the wall.

6. To the end; completely.

   I haven't finished. Hear me out.

   • Deceitful men shall not live out half their days.

7. Used to intensify or emphasize.

   The place was all decked out for the holidays.

8. (of the sun, moon, stars, etc.) So as to be visible in the sky, and not covered by clouds, fog, etc.

   The sun came out after the rain, and we saw a rainbow.

9. (cricket, baseball) Of a player, so as to be disqualified from playing further by some action of a member of the opposing team (such as being stumped in cricket).

   Wilson was bowled out for five runs.

See also

There are numerous individual phrasal verbs, such as come out, go out, pull out, put out, take out, and so on.

Synonyms

• (not at home): away

Antonyms

• (not at home): in

Derived terms

• move out
• thought-out
• out-of-bounds

Related terms

Translations

Preposition

out

1. From from the inside to the outside of; out of. [from 14th c.]
   • c. 1608, William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, V.2:

     Can you, when you have pushed out your gates the very defender of them, and in a violent popular ignorance given your enemy your shield, think to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied intercession of such a decayed dotant as you seem to be?

   • 1830, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Adeline":

     Thy roselips and full blue eyes / Take the heart from out my breast.

   • 2012, Thomas Gifford, Woman in the Window:

     After she'd made her single cup of coffee she sat looking out the window into the slushy, halficy backyard and dialed Tony's number on Staten Island.

Usage notes

• The use of out as a preposition, as in look out the window, is standard in American, Australian, and New Zealand English, and is common in speech and informal contexts in Britain, but is not standard British English.

Synonyms

• (away from the inside): through

Antonyms

• (away from the inside): in

Translations

Noun

out (plural outs)

1. A means of exit, escape, reprieve, etc.

   They wrote the law to give those organizations an out.

3. (baseball) A state in which a member of the batting team is removed from play due to the application of various rules of the game such as striking out, hitting a fly ball which is caught by the fielding team before bouncing, etc.
4. (cricket) A dismissal; a state in which a member of the batting team finishes his turn at bat, due to the application of various rules of the game, such as the bowler knocking over the batsman's wicket with the ball.
5. (poker) A card which can make a hand a winner.
   • 2005, Alison M. Pendergast, Play Winning Poker in No Time (page 57)

     As a beginner, when you are in a hand, you should practice counting your outs, or those live cards left in the deck that can improve your hand.

   • 2006, David Apostolico, Lessons from the Professional Poker Tour (page 21)

     If he did have a bigger ace, I still had at least six outs — the case ace, two nines, and three tens. I could also have more outs if he held anything less than A-K.

6. (dated) A trip out; an outing.
   • 1852-53, Charles Dickens, Bleak House

     Us London lawyers don't often get an out; and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know.

7. (chiefly in the plural) One who, or that which, is out; especially, one who is out of office.

   Antonym: in

   • 1827, Benjamin Chew, A Sketch of the Politics, Relations, and Statistics, of the Western World (page 192)

     This memoir has nothing to do with the question between the ins and the outs; it is intended neither to support nor to assail the administration; it is general in its views upon a general and national subject; […]

8. A place or space outside of something; a nook or corner; an angle projecting outward; an open space.
9. (printing, dated) A word or words omitted by the compositor in setting up copy; an omission.

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (auto)
• ? Korean: ?? (aut)

Translations

Verb

out (third-person singular simple present outs, present participle outing, simple past and past participle outed)

1. (transitive) To eject; to expel.
   • 1689, John Selden, Table Talk

     a king outed of his country

   • 1674, Peter Heylin, Cosmographie in four bookes

     The French have been outed from their holds.
2. (intransitive) To come or go out; to get out or away; to become public, revealed, or apparent.
3. (transitive) To reveal (a person or organization) as having a certain secret, such as a being a secret agent or undercover detective.
   • 2009 March 16, Maurna Desmond, "AIG Outs Counterparties" (online news article), Forbes.com.
4. (transitive) To reveal (a secret).

   A Brazilian company outed the new mobile phone design.

5. (transitive, LGBT) To reveal (a person) as LGBT+ (gay, trans, etc).
   • 2015, Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir, Verso Books (?ISBN):

     Trans Media Watch had recently spoken at the Leveson Inquiry about how the Sun and the Daily Mail routinely outed trans people, publishing old names and photos, for no reason other than because they could.

   • 2016, Molly Booth, Saving Hamlet, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (?ISBN):

     The Parkses were strict and narrowminded, and not knowing what to do with their recently outed bisexual teenage daughter, their obvious solution was to cut her off from her friends and keep her from leaving the house.

   • 2020, Jos Twist, Meg-John Barker, Kat Gupta, Benjamin Vincent, Non-Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (?ISBN), page 116:

     As of 2018, I chair the workforce committee and lead on diversity and inclusion, including heading up a policy review on gender identity and trans inclusion, although that led me to be publicly outed as non-binary in the Sunday Times.

6. To kill; to snuff out.

Synonyms

• (reveal a secret): See also Thesaurus:divulge

Translations

Adjective

out (not comparable)

1. Not at home; not at one's office or place of employment.

   I'm sorry, Mr Smith is out at the moment.

2. Not inside or within something.

   I worked away cleaning the U-bend until all the gunge was out.

3. Freed from confinement or secrecy.

4. Not fitted or inserted into something.

   The TV won't work with the plug out!

5. (sports) Of the ball or other playing implement, falling or passing outside the bounds of the playing area.

   I thought the ball hit the line, but the umpire said it was out.

6. Released, available for purchase, download or other use.
7. (in various games; used especially of a batsman or batter in cricket or baseball) Dismissed from play under the rules of the game.

   He bowls, Johnson pokes at it ... and ... Johnson is out! Caught behind by Ponsonby!

8. (LGBT) Openly acknowledging that one is LGBT+ (gay, trans, etc).
   • 2011, Allan Bérubé, My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and Labor History:

     I had not come out yet and he was out but wasn't; quite ungay, I would say, and yet gay.

   • 2018, Matthew Waites, Supporting Young Transgender Men: A Guide for Professionals, Jessica Kingsley Publishers (?ISBN), page 40:

     However, for a transgender man, while living stealth can be a feasible option for some, key people will need to know […] Not everyone has to be out, loud and proud or march down the streets holding trans flags […]

9. (by extension, uncommon) Open, public; public about or openly acknowledging some (usually specified) identity.
   • 2014, Arlene Stein, Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness, Oxford University Press (?ISBN):

     She was “out” as a survivor for the first time in her life. “I had friends who had known me many, many years who are totally astounded, shocked,” she said. “They could not believe that I was a Holocaust survivor. [...]”

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:out.
10. (of flowers) In bloom.

    The garden looks beautiful now that the roses are out.

11. (of the sun, moon or stars) Visible in the sky; not obscured by clouds.

    The sun is out, and it's a lovely day.

12. (of lamps, fires etc.) Not shining or burning.

    I called round to the house but all the lights were out and no one was home.

13. (of ideas, plans, etc.) Discarded; no longer a possibility.

    Right, so that idea's out. Let's move on to the next one.

14. (of certain services, devices, or facilities) Not available; out of service.

    Power is out in the entire city.

    My wi-fi is out.

15. (of a user of a service) Not having availability of a service, as power or communications.

    Most of the city got service back yesterday, but my neighborhood is still out.

16. (of an organization, etc.) Temporarily not in operation, or not being attended as usual.

    when school gets out for today, when college is out for the summer

17. Of the tide, at or near its lowest level.

    You can walk to the island when the tide's out.

18. No longer popular or in fashion.

    Black is out this season. The new black is white.

19. Without; no longer in possession of; not having more

    Do you have any bread? Sorry, we're out.

20. (of calculations or measurements) Containing errors or discrepancies; in error by a stated amount.

    Nothing adds up in this report. All these figures are out.

    The measurement was out by three millimetres.

21. (obsolete) Of a young lady: having entered society and available to be courted.

Usage notes

• In cricket, the specific cause or rule under which a batsman is out appears after the word “out”, e.g., “out hit the ball twice”.
• In baseball, the cause is expressed as a verb with adverbial “out”, e.g., “he grounded out”.

Synonyms

• (no longer popular): démodé, passé, unchic; see also Thesaurus:unfashionable

Antonyms

• (disqualified from playing): in, safe
• (openly acknowledging that one is LGBT+): closeted

Hyponyms

• (openly acknowledging that one is LGBT+): openly gay, etc.

Translations

Interjection

out

1. (procedure word, especially military) A radio procedure word meaning that the station is finished with its transmission and does not expect a response.

   Destruction. Two T-72s destroyed. Three foot mobiles down. Out.
2. Get out; begone; away!
   • 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth

     Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

Coordinate terms

• over

Derived terms

• over and out

Derived terms

See also Category:English phrasal verbs with particle (out)

Related terms

• outen

References

• Andrea Tyler and Vyvyan Evans, "Bounded landmarks", in The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 0-521-81430 8
• out at OneLook Dictionary Search

Breton

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ut/

Verb

out

1. second-person singular present indicative of bezañ

Bukiyip

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?wut?]

Noun

out

1. rat

References

• 2007. The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Department of Linguistics.

Chinese

Alternative forms

• OUT

Etymology

Borrowed from English out.

Verb

out

1. (slang) to be outdated

German

Etymology

Borrowed from English out. Doublet of aus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /a??t/, [?a??t?]
• Rhymes: -a??t

Adjective

out (not comparable)

1. (colloquial) out of fashion

Declension

Synonyms

• altmodisch, unmodern

Antonyms

• angesagt
• in (colloquial)

Further reading

• “out” in Duden online
• “out” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “out” in PONS (pons.com)
  “out” in PONS (pons.com)

Haitian Creole

Etymology

From French août (“August”)

Noun

out

1. August

Mauritian Creole

Etymology

From French août

Noun

out

1. August

Middle Dutch

Etymology

From Old Dutch ald, from Proto-West Germanic *ald, from Proto-Germanic *aldaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /out/

Adjective

out (comparative ouder, superlative outst)

1. old

   Antonym: jonc

Inflection

Derived terms

• ouden

Descendants

• Dutch: oud
  • Afrikaans: oud
• Limburgish: aad

Further reading

• “out”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929) , “out (I)”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ?ISBN, page I

Spanish

Noun

out m (plural outs)

1. (baseball) out