1
as in gossipers
a person who habitually reveals personal or sensational facts about others
the media's professional telltales have basically decided that today's celebrities have no right to privacy
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
2
as in informants
a person who provides information about another's wrongdoing
the department telltale told the boss that his coworkers were taking extra long breaks
Synonyms & Similar Words
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for telltales
Noun
-
Jessica Simpson has gotten used to gossipers gossiping about her private life.—
Gil Kaufman,
Billboard,
3 Sep. 2019
Noun
-
Closer to home, agents searched houses across New England, relying heavily on informants.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
26 Apr. 2026
-
Federal prosecutors in Alabama secured an 11-count indictment accusing the organization of paying millions of dollars to some of those undercover informants and hiding the real purpose of the payments from its donors.—
Josh Meyer,
USA Today,
25 Apr. 2026
Noun
-
The piece contends that while rumors circulated among political gossips and online, these remained unsubstantiated whispers that did not meet journalism’s evidentiary threshold for publication.—
Los Angeles Times,
Los Angeles Times,
17 Apr. 2026
-
Local gossips claimed that Chin Ming Tai paid Moy Sing a bride price of $20,000, an astronomical sum for the time.—
Charlotte Brooks,
Big Think,
13 Mar. 2026
Noun
-
And so every regime invests in having student informers.—
Anne Applebaum,
The Atlantic,
23 Jan. 2026
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Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used.—
David Rising,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Jan. 2026
Noun
-
The proverbial canaries in coal mines will then cause a recession.—
Jim Cramer,
CNBC,
1 Mar. 2026
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By crunching data from millions of monthly payroll records for workers in jobs with exposure to generative AI, the authors concluded that workers ages 22 to 25—the canaries—have seen about a 13 percent decline in employment since late 2022.—
Josh Tyrangiel,
The Atlantic,
10 Feb. 2026
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Cite this Entry
“Telltales.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/telltales. Accessed 1 May. 2026.
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