to tell stories
73
1.4
- phrasal verb
:
contar historias
- Every night before bed, she likes to tell stories that inspire her children to dream big.
- children tell stories
- pictures tell stories
- people tell stories
These are people who are telling stories about Jesus in Greek.
- These are people who are telling stories about Jesus in Greek.
- These are the people who tell stories in our time.
- So Hollywood, they tell stories and they're brilliant at it.
- You've talked to people that told stories of UFO encounters.
- If we rule out telling stories, then science dies.
- Learn to be charismatic, learn to tell stories, learn to ask questions.
- What does it mean to tell stories like the ones you mentioned, Alex?
- That's how you tell stories in general.
- Or am I just sitting and telling stories about the past?
- But I've always loved telling stories and writing.
- So you need to tell stories about the value of inclusion.
- We like to, as we tell stories, also teach.
- My, my end of things is telling stories, shedding light.
- Well, when I tell stories, those videos go viral.
- Soon they began to tell stories, evidence of racism in their community.
Examples
-
We were all sitting in a booth at the Dream Cafe telling stories about our first lovers.
Fiction book (1995) -
Whenever possible, tell stories to illustrate content and encourage students to tell stories, especially digital stories.
Academic text (2013) -
These are the people who tell stories in our time.
-
Like I tell stories to my kids.
-
We like to, as we tell stories, also teach.
-
If you want to tell stories, find a way to do it.
-
Later on that night, we started telling stories, mostly the two of us.
Fiction book (1994) -
History, simply put, consists of telling stories about the ways that people lived in the past.
Academic text (1992) -
So in Telescope Radio, students learn how to tell stories using only sound.
-
Well, when I tell stories, those videos go viral.
Synonyms
84
1.1
To describe things that happened, real or made up, to other people
83
4.1
To tell someone about something you experienced in detail
59
4.0
To tell a story, usually by speaking or writing
58
2.9
To tell what happened
3
3.5
Say a story about something that happened or show signs of it
1
6.8
To tell a long made-up or exaggerated story
1
4.8
Make up and tell a tale, often to entertain or avoid trouble
1
6.8
To amuse people by telling interesting stories
Antonyms
How Factual
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to narrate accounts of events' is directly and compositionally derived from 'tell' (to recount) plus 'stories' (narratives); there is no idiomatic shift or metaphorical extension. This simple verb + noun pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Tell stories comes from old times when people sat around a fire and one person would tell while others listened to stories about true events or made-up adventures. So tell stories means 'to tell about events or to make up and share adventures'.