Learn how to use the verb "Tell"
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hi everybody, my name is Alisha. Welcome back to Know Your Verbs. In this lesson, we're going to talk about the verb "tell." Let's get started. |
| The basic definition of the verb "tell" is to give information. A quick reminder, this verb often is kind of one-sided. It's like one person giving information to another person. |
| Some examples: please tell me what happened. |
| I think I already told you this story. |
| Now let's look at the conjugations for this verb. |
| Present: tell, tells |
| Past: told |
| Past participle: told |
| Progressive: telling |
| Now, let's talk about some additional meanings for this verb. The first additional meaning is to order or command some examples: tell her to call me back. I was told to leave immediately. This meaning of tell, which means to order or command requires the use of the infinitive after your verb tell. So in the first example sentence, tell her to call me back. We see, to call or to call someone back is our verb. We've used it in the infinitive form. Remember, the infinitive is two plus the verb. So tell her to call me. Using the infinitive shows us the command. |
| So tell is like giving an instruction to someone. Tell her to do what? To call me back. That's the command there. In the second example sentence, I was told to leave immediately. We see the same thing. The speaker doesn't explain exactly who gave the. But the speaker says, in passive, I was told to leave immediately. In other words, I was commanded or ordered to leave right away. So when you want to use "tell" in this way, make sure to use the infinitive form of the verb. If you just follow tell or the variations in conjugation with a noun phrase, it just becomes passing information. Like, Tell me your phone number or Tell me the address. Tell her your best recipes, for example. |
| When we're not using a verb, it's not a command. So make sure when you want to command someone to do something, you use the infinitive form of the verb. In this case, the next additional meaning is to recognize or to understand. |
| Some examples: |
| I can't tell you cut your hair. |
| How can you tell he is lying? |
| So in both of these example sentences, "tell" is used to mean, understand, or detect or recognize. So, In the first example sentence, I can't tell you cut your hair. It's like, I can't understand, or I can't recognize, I can't see or notice that you cut your hair. In other words, your hair looks very similar to the last time I saw you. |
| In the second example sentence, it's a question, how can you tell he's lying? Another way to say this would be, how do you know he's lying? So tell is used here again to mean, recognize, or understand. How are you able to recognize that that person is lying? We use tell a lot in this. Tell is very short and very quick and easy way to say, recognize or understand, and it's very casual. We use this a lot in everyday conversation. You'll often hear, How can you tell? How can you tell? Which means, how do you know? So try to use this yourself. It's very, very common. |
| The next additional meaning is to have an effect on someone. To have an effect on someone. |
| Let's look at some examples: |
| The stress of her job was telling on her. |
| Their poor eating habits were starting to tell. |
| So when we use "tell" as in these cases, it's like there's some effect that's occurring because of another situation, and it's an effect we can recognize. In the first example sentence, the stress of her job was starting to tell on her. It was having an effect, yes, and maybe the effects of that situation are visible to other people. For example, her appearance has changed, or her attitude has changed, or something similar. So when we say tell, something is starting to tell, As in this case, it means other people are able to recognize or identify the situation. |
| The second example sentence, their poor eating habits were starting to tell. We see the same thing. So there's some kind of effect. In this case, we have this negative effect probably of bad eating habits and other people are able to recognize those bad habits. The effects of those habits we use tell to describe that. |
| Now let's move along to some variations in how we use this verb. |
| The first variation is to tell somebody off. |
| To tell somebody off. |
| This means to get angry with someone for their bad behavior. |
| Let's look at some examples: |
| Our manager told off our new employee for coming in late all week. |
| Your parents are gonna tell you off for crashing their car. |
| So these are situations where one person has caused a problem. In the first example sentence, it's a new employee who comes late all week. So the manager becomes angry and the manager speaks angrily to the new employee, to the person causing the problem. So to tell someone off, the manager told off a new employee means to speak angrily to someone about the thing they did wrong about the problem they cause. |
| The second example sentence shows us something the speaker thinks is going to happen in the future. Your parents are gonna tell you off for crashing their car, means your parents are going to speak to you very angrily because you caused this problem because you crashed their car. So to tell somebody off means to speak angrily or to shout at somebody because of something bad they did. |
| The next variation is to tell things or to tell people apart. This expression means to be able to detect differences in people or to detect differences in items and objects. |
| Some examples: |
| They're identical twins. I can't tell them apart. |
| Can you tell these two pictures apart? I don't see a difference. |
| So to tell two things apart, to tell two people apart or to tell the difference between two things or more things means to be able to recognize things that are not the same among two objects or two people, or perhaps more In the first example sentence, it's about identical twins. So they're identical twins. I can't tell them apart, means they have the exact same appearance. I don't know which person is which, or it's difficult for me to detect the differences between these two people. They seem the same to me. I can't tell them apart. |
| In the second example sentence, it's a question. Can you tell these two pictures apart? means, do you see the differences between these two pictures, or do you see any difference between these two pictures? The speaker is having trouble finding something that's different, so they ask a question. So to tell something apart means to be able to distinguish one thing from another thing. |
| Typically, these things are very similar, so there's maybe just small points of difference. So to tell something apart or to tell the difference between two things. |
| The next variation is to tell on someone. |
| To tell on someone. |
| This means to report someone's wrongdoing or bad behavior to a person of authority. |
| Let's look at some example: |
| My little brother told on me. |
| You broke mom's phone. I'm gonna tell on you! |
| So to tell on someone, to tell on someone means to report that someone did something bad. This is an expression that is used a lot among children. We typically use it as children for like household problems, like breaking something, as we see in the second example sentence, or like everyday mischief. We can use it for larger problems, especially as we grow older, but adults who use the expression to tell on someone sound a little bit childish when we report someone else's wrongdoing for just a simple like every day problem. It sounds a little bit childish, but this is something we typically use as children or when talking about children or talking to children. So to tell on someone, we don't often include the person we report to. We don't say, I told my mom or I told my dad about this problem. We just say, I'm gonna tell on you as a threat. Like, I'm going to report you. To the nearest authority figure, like whoever is the adult in the room, I'm going to tell that person about what you did. |
| That's what to tell on someone is. |
| So, as a result in these expressions, we don't often say the person who is receiving the information, we don't describe that. So you might hear people drop it in like that. Like, I'm gonna tell mom on you, or I'm gonna tell dad on you, if they want to be specific about who they're going to report. |
| We have another verb to describe this as well. The verb to tattle describes this exact situation, so if you find it difficult to remember to tell on someone, you can use the verb to tattle. To tattle. It is like this childish reporting of bad behavior. Okay, so we'll finish there though. So those are hopefully a few new ways that you can use the verb tell. |
| If you have any questions, comments, or if you know some other ways of using this verb, please feel free to let us know in the comment section of this video. |
| Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we'll see you again soon. Bye bye. |
Comments
Hide