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untell. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
untell, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
untell in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
From un- + tell.
Verb
untell (third-person singular simple present untells, present participle untelling, simple past and past participle untold)
- (transitive) To withdraw or retract (something told); to never have told.
1993, Jack Selzer, Understanding scientific prose, page 54:Narrative untells itself by multiplying itself into discontinuous "turns" that cannot be resolved into a continuous story.
1998, Diane DuBose Brunner, Between the masks: resisting the politics of essentialism, page 29:Trinh (1991) writes that untelling the stories of privilege and marginality is a form of displacement that takes a long time.
2004, Patrick Bizzaro, More lights than one: on the fiction of Fred Chappell, page 103:And once his story was told, it was told; there was no way to untell it, no way to make himself look good.
- (transitive, archaic) To undo or reverse the counting of; to count back.
1607, Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness:That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, / To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.