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Glite Dictionary
🗣️ To report wrongdoing 😓 To harm over time
to tell on

to tell on

1 6.2
To hurt the body or mind over time
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : pasar factura (a alguien)
  • The strain was telling on her tired fingers.
  • began to tell on

Examples

  • By this time, the pressure had begun to tell on them all.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The long hours at work began to tell on her health, causing fatigue and stress.

  • I had to kill her because she was going to tell on me.

    Orphan (2009)

  • And the work told on them, gentled them down.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Even Sherri had to admit that almost two months of making up for time lost back home was beginning to tell on her.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • But by yesterday—day forty-eight—the pressure had truly begun to tell on him.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The continuous pressure of their studies was starting to tell on the students' mental well-being.

  • After weeks of training, the physical demands were beginning to tell on his performance in the competition.

Antonyms

to improve
∞ 1.0

To make something better

to heal
481 1.2

To become healthy again after an injury, illness, or emotional pain

How Damaging

to ruin
∞ 2.0
to harm
738 1.0
to tell on
1 6.2
to wear down
27 4.1
to affect
∞ 3.0

Surface Forms

tell on infinitive
told on past
told on past participle
telling on present participle
tells on third person singular

Morphology

tell + on

The verb 'tell' already conveys reporting, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents may suspect this MWE relates to reporting someone. However, the particle 'on' does not transparently encode the sense 'to inform an authority causing trouble'—the specific accusatory/reporting nuance is a phrasal-verb collocation that typically requires prior exposure.

Etymology

Tell on comes from the idea of the verb tell meaning 'to show' and the word on, so something can 'show on' a person — for example, years of hard work showing on your face or body and making you look tired or weak. That's why it means 'to have a noticeable or damaging effect'.