tattle
A tattletaleA tattletale.
» She tattled on me to her teacher.
Она наябедничала на меня своей учительнице. — odexed
Jesse · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
3 senses(countable)A tattletale.
(Canada, US, countable, derogatory)Often said of children: a piece of incriminating information or an account of wrongdoing that is said about another person.
disclosing information or giving evidence about another
(uncountable)Idle talk; gossip; (countable) an instance of such talk or gossip.
Klatsch, Tratsch
Examples
5 sentencesShe tattled on me to her teacher.
ruОна наябедничала на меня своей учительнице. — odexed
I've got no respect for finks, snitches, or tattle-tales.
Nobody likes a tattle-tale.
What little girl didn't tattle to her mother about the naughty things the boys were doing?
Eve swore Minnie to secrecy in hopes that she wouldn't tattle about what they'd done.
Translations
1 languagesBy meaning 1
Origin
From Middle Dutch tatelen, tateren (“to babble, chatter”) (modern Dutch tatelen, tateren (From Middle Dutch tatelen, tateren (“to babble, chatter”) (modern Dutch tatelen, tateren (“to talk, chatter”)), originally imitative. The word is cognate with Saterland Frisian tätelje (“to talk nonsense, babble”), Middle Low German tāteren, tadderen (“to babble, chatter”) (whence modern German Low German tatern (“to chatter”)), Low German tateln, täteln (“to cackle, gabble”). Compare also Middle English dadel, dadull (“tattling, gossip”), and its alteration twaddle.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: tattlesSynonyms
16 synonymsWord family
11 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.