Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
tale (noun)1.
obsolete - discourse talk
2.
a) a series of events or facts told or presented - account
b) (1) a report of a private or confidential matter - dead men tell no tales
(2) a libelous report or piece of gossip
3.
a) a usually imaginative narrative of an event - story
b) an intentionally untrue report - falsehood always preferred the tale to the truth Sir Winston Churchill
4.
a) - count tally
b) - total
Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus
tale (noun)1.
a rumor or report of a personal or sensational nature
SYNONIMS:
canard, story, whisperRELATED WORDS:
dirt, gossip, scuttlebutt, talebearing, talk, tattle; dirty laundry, dirty linen; defamation, libel, slander; hearsay; fable, fabrication, fairy tale, falsehood, falsity, fib, lie, mendacity, prevarication, untruth, whopper2.
a brief account of something interesting that happened especially to one personally
SYNONIMS:
anecdote, tale, yarnRELATED WORDS:
episode, event, happening, incident, occurrence; recital, recitation3.
a statement known by its maker to be untrue and made in order to deceive
SYNONIMS:
fable, fabrication, fairy tale, falsehood, falsity, fib, mendacity, prevarication, story, tale, taradiddle ( tarradiddle), untruth, whopperRELATED WORDS:
distortion, exaggeration, half-truth; ambiguity, equivocation, obliquity; defamation, libel, slander; perjury; bluff, fiction, pose, pretense ( pretence); humbug, jive, nonsense; canard, fallacy, misconception, myth; falsification, misinformation, misreport, misrepresentation, misstatement; deceit, deceitfulness, dishonesty, duplicity, fraudulenceNEAR ANTONYMS:
fact, truism, verity; honesty, truthfulness, veracity; authentication, confirmation, substantiation, validation, verification4.
a work with imaginary characters and events that is shorter and usually less complex than a novel
SYNONIMS:
narrative, novelette, novella, short story, tale, yarnRELATED WORDS:
bedtime story; exemplum, fable, parable; anecdote, joke; fairy tale, folktale, legend, myth, romance; account, annals, chronicle, history, record, report5.
a total number obtained or recorded by noting each thing as it was being added
SYNONIMS:
census, tale, tallyRELATED WORDS:
score; amount, gross, sum, total, whole; recount