Crossword clues for tattle
tattle
- Idle talk
- Divulge a secret
- Tale starter
- Tell a secret
- Kind of tale
- Give away a secret
- Spill it
- Be a stoolie
- Be a rat fink
- Report to mom
- Tell the teacher
- Play the informer
- Tell the playground monitor
- Tell Mom
- Sing like a child?
- Say what someone naughty did
- Rat, so to speak
- Rat someone out
- Rat out your little brother, say
- Let it be known
- Inform to Mom
- Give things away
- Disclose secret
- Act the rat fink
- Act the snitch
- Be a snitch
- Spill the beans
- Snitch
- Squeal
- Tell tales
- Be a fink
- Get in trouble, in a way, with "on"
- Rat (on)
- Schoolyard report?
- Talk idly
- Disclosing information or giving evidence about another
- Prate
- Blab about someone's misbehavior
- Tell on a classmate
- Tell secrets
- Type of tale
- Clement Attlee's content to gossip
- Story about extremely truculent rabbit
- Felt tattooist up to check rumours
- Rubbish story not involving a rabbit
- Trotskyist extremists featuring in story that's idle gossip
- Tell on someone
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tattle \Tat"tle\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Tattled; p. pr. & vb. n. Tattling.] [Akin to OE. tateren, LG. tateln, D. tateren to stammer, and perhaps to E. titter.]
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To prate; to talk idly; to use many words with little meaning; to chat.
The tattling quality of age, which is always narrative.
--Dryden. To tell tales; to communicate secrets; to be a talebearer; as, a tattling girl.
Tattle \Tat"tle\, n. Idle talk or chat; trifling talk; prate.
[They] told the tattle of the day.
--Swift.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 15c., "to stammer, prattle," in Caxton's translation of "Reynard the Fox," probably from Middle Flemish tatelen "to stutter," parallel to Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, East Frisian tateren "to chatter, babble," possibly of imitative origin. The meaning "tell tales or secrets" is first recorded 1580s. Sense influenced by tittle. Related: Tattled; tattling. As a noun from 1520s. Tattler, the name of the famous periodical by Addison and Steele (1709-1711), means "idle talker, a gossip."
Wiktionary
n. 1 A tattletale. 2 gossip; idle talk. vb. 1 (senseid en to report others' wrongdoings or violations)(context intransitive pejorative English) To report others' wrongdoings or violations; to tell on somebody; to gossip or to disclose incriminating information. 2 (context intransitive English) To chatter.
WordNet
v. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly [syn: chatter, piffle, palaver, prate, tittle-tattle, twaddle, clack, maunder, prattle, blab, gibber, blabber, gabble]
divulge confidential information or secrets; "Be careful--his secretary talks" [syn: spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag, talk, blab, peach, babble, sing, babble out, blab out] [ant: keep quiet]
Usage examples of "tattle".
The tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife.
The gods know among how many people Bibulus has been busy, tattling the story of my affair with King Nicomedes.
First, because it makes their tattling more effective and more harassing, since we cannot doubt what they tell us.
I felt only animosity toward the tattling, tag-a-long brat, and yet I could not leave him there to face the cold awakening he deserved.
Mrs Winkworth that Bath was a hotbed of scandal, warning her, with his ready laugh, that it was enough for an unattached gentleman to offer his arm to a single lady for the length of a street to set all the quizzies tattling that he was dangling after her.
Infamous of me to laugh, when the tattling wretch who wrote that ridiculous farrago has been the cause of your being put to so much pain and inconvenience!
Jasper and Flint were having one of those long, drawn-out fights where they actually got nasty, which sometimes included tattling, even though Mama punished the tale-teller as well as the person ratted on.
He still paid her housekeeping although she did not keep house, dividing her time between tattling with her friends, television, the cinema and the bingo hall.
Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay.
Beryl had no desire to antagonize Targonne, who would most certainly run tattling to Malys that he was being mistreated.
If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation: and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the county.
They enter a school, tattle round lies, play silly jokes behind some one by sneaking and cheating and get wrongly swellheaded when they finish the school thinking they have received an education.
Owien and Cei, and how many more who would have and did follow Arthur no matter what tattling lies could be told?
He told her all that Calvert had said, all that Ned Hinkley had fancied himself to have heard, and all the village tattle touching the engagement supposed to exist between Stevens and her daughter.
I try not to for L'bol's sake because Timenth tattles on me and that depresses L'bol even more.