tale

1 a rumor or report of a personal or sensational nature <don't believe the tales you hear about our neighbor's kid> Synonyms canard, story, whisper Related Words dirt, gossip, scuttlebutt, talebearing, talk, tattle; dirty laundry, dirty linen; defamation, libel, slander; hearsay; fable, fabrication, fairy tale, falsehood, falsity, fib, lie, mendacity, prevarication, untruth, whopper

2 a brief account of something interesting that happened especially to one personally <asked Dad to tell once again the tale of how, as a kid, he broke his arm jumping out of a tree> Synonyms anecdote, story, yarnRelated Words episode, event, happening, incident, occurrence; recital, recitation

3 a statement known by its maker to be untrue and made in order to deceive <told tall tales in an attempt to impress me with her supposedly upper-crust background> Synonyms fable, fabrication, fairy tale, falsehood, falsity, fib, mendacity, prevarication, story, lie, taradiddle (or tarradiddle), untruth, whopperRelated Words distortion, exaggeration, half-truth; ambiguity, equivocation, obliquity; defamation, libel, slander; perjury; bluff, fiction, pose, pretense (or pretence); humbug, jive, nonsense; canard, fallacy, misconception, myth; falsification, misinformation, misreport, misrepresentation, misstatement; deceit, deceitfulness, dishonesty, duplicity, fraudulenceNear Antonyms fact, truism, verity; honesty, truthfulness, veracity; authentication, confirmation, substantiation, validation, verificationAntonyms truth

4 a work with imaginary characters and events that is shorter and usually less complex than a novel <the oft-told tale of Sleeping Beauty> Synonyms narrative, novelette, novella, short story, story, yarnRelated Words bedtime story; exemplum, fable, parable; anecdote, joke; fairy tale, folktale, legend, myth, romance; account, annals, chronicle, history, record, report

5 a total number obtained or recorded by noting each thing as it was being added <when the tale of the dead from the disaster is announced, the city will be in shock> Synonyms census, count, tallyRelated Words score; amount, gross, sum, total, whole; recount