How to Use tale in a Sentence

tale

noun
  • The movie is a stirring tale of courage.
  • Are you telling tales again? Or is that the truth?
  • He told us thrilling tales about his adventures as a pilot in the war.
  • We listened to his familiar tale of woe as he talked again about the failure of his marriage.
  • Plus, don’t miss the whale of a tale that started with a cloud of snot.
    CNN, 17 Oct. 2023
  • The true-crime tale of a genius art thief who kept all the spoils for himself.
    The California Independent Booksellers Alliance, Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 2024
  • William Faulkner told all sorts of tall tales about his life and work.
    James Campbell, WSJ, 17 Nov. 2023
  • The amount of half-down 3-pointers in the closing minutes told the tale: Close, but not enough.
    Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press, 12 Jan. 2024
  • Whatever could be made of that tale, the new face—his face—was here to stay.
    Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2023
  • That fact is no less improbable than the tale that led Vail to the Beach Boys in the first place.
    Joe Rubin, Sacramento Bee, 27 Mar. 2024
  • This cautionary tale gets to the heart of the dark side of celebrity culture.
    Jessica Gentile, Vulture, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Check out the exhibits, take the tour and hear the tale of the 1964 tsunami that swept across the city and stranded the lighthouse keepers in the tower.
    Jackie Burrell, The Mercury News, 8 Apr. 2024
  • All the while, the 2014 pro-democracy uprisings are the backdrop to this tale.
    Aramide Tinubu, Variety, 26 Jan. 2024
  • That’s what counts as a silver lining to this sorry tale.
    Sal Pizarro, The Mercury News, 12 Mar. 2024
  • The timeless tale has resonated for decades and shows no signs of stopping.
    Angel Madison, Country Living, 6 June 2023
  • Though in this case, the fact in question may be more of a tall tale—but an amusing one, nonetheless.
    Chris Klimek, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 Dec. 2023
  • That was the sad tale of Caudipteryx, a three-foot-long dinosaur that lived about 125 million years ago in what’s now China.
    Meghan Bartels, Scientific American, 25 Jan. 2024
  • And, indeed, there is one more data point in my little tale.
    Neil Senturia, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Jan. 2024
  • Yet, the show moves past a surface-level tale because of its layers.
    Aramide Tinubu, Variety, 1 Dec. 2023
  • With Avatar 3, 4, and 5 on the horizons, fans can anticipate more tales of the Na'vi for the next several years.
    EW.com, 4 Apr. 2024
  • Then, there was the oyster date tale in October about the woman who ordered 48 oysters on a first date and got left with the bill.
    Essence, 4 Jan. 2024
  • Such putrid circumstances promise a grim tale, but this is a book by James McBride.
    Ron Charles, Washington Post, 3 Aug. 2023
  • The role of the water deities, which the artist symbolically portrays in her photos and videos, is one of the artist’s additions to the tale.
    Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 17 May 2023
  • Many of their lyrics also nod back to Siberian landscapes or old folklore tales.
    Christian Allaire, Vogue, 3 Apr. 2024
  • Monkey Man is, on the surface, a fairly simple tale of vengeance: Man has vendetta.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 12 Mar. 2024
  • The coming-of-age superhero tale comes from the DC Comics universe and is set to arrive in theaters this August.
    Charisma Madarang, Rolling Stone, 5 June 2023
  • And throughout these countless hours on the road and in the air, Sabo and Skid Row managed to survive, if anything, to write more great music and tell us the many tales from it.
    Gen Handley, SPIN, 6 June 2023
  • From one tale to the next, tissues might get soggy and eyes puffy, but the hope that there will be more stories will surely lift readers’ hearts.
    Terry Hong, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Oct. 2023
  • The sense of isolation its title evokes refers to the eerie tales in its pages as well as to Black people’s uneasy history with the genre.
    Stephen Kearse, The Atlantic, 26 Jan. 2024
  • The history of music is full of outlandish tales of varying degrees of truth.
    Doug MacK, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 July 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tale.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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