tell the difference

idiom

: to see how two or more people or things are unlike each other

It's hard to tell the difference between one action movie and another.

The new version is supposed to be much better than the old one, but I can't tell the difference (between them).

Examples of tell the difference in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

While the pricier joggers use a patented spandex, reviewers say the feel is virtually the same—many can’t even tell the difference, or even go so far as to say the Amazon version is better. —Olivia Young, Travel + Leisure, 19 June 2025

This type of work was useful in the early stages of AI development, when AI companies were still struggling to teach image models to tell the difference between cats and dogs, or teach language models to string together coherent sentences. —Billy Perrigo, Time, 16 June 2025

When every company sounds the same, buyers can’t tell the difference. —Jaime Catmull, Forbes.com, 13 June 2025

But this insincere hack rudely assumes that children can’t tell the difference between a simple, nice thing and a more complicated, far inferior thing. —Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic, 16 Apr. 2025

Rhymes for tell the difference

• indifference