tell tales out of school
"tell-tales-out-of-school" is a 20-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tell tales out of school” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 24
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To reveal confidential or sensitive information; to gossip.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tell-tales-out-of-school · tell tales out of school · English
tell tales out of school · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 24 letters
- VOW-8 8 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | tell tales out of school |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 24 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “tell tales out of school” in English
Rare enough to double-check
tell tales out of school is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To reveal confidential or sensitive information; to gossip.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for tell tales out of school, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is tell tales out of school, spelled T-E-L-L- -T-A-L-E-S- -O-U-T- -O-F- -S-C-H-O-O-L.
Definition
- 1To reveal confidential or sensitive information; to gossip.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tell tales out of school appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I see then we have both been at school. But did you never, when you were there, hear it said, "Tell no tales out of school?"
Mr. Washington had seen the gentlemen of honour and fashion over their cups, and perhaps thought that all their sayings and doings were not precisely such as would tend to instruct or edify a young man on his entrance into life; but he wisely chose to tell no tales out of school.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.