Word Finder - tales

definition

Any of several units of measure used in China and elsewhere in eastern Asia, approximately 40 grams.

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Any of several monetary units equal to the equivalent weight in silver.

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Leung, a traditional unit of weight, in modern usage legally defined as 1/16 of a catty or kan (斤) or 0.0377993638 kilograms

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An account of an asserted fact or circumstance; a rumour; a report, especially an idle or malicious story; a piece of gossip or slander; a lie.

example

Don't tell tales!

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A rehearsal of what has occurred; narrative; discourse; statement; history; story.

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the Canterbury Tales

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A number told or counted off; a reckoning by count; an enumeration.

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The fraudulent opportunity presented by a confidence man to the mark or victim.

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Number; tally; quota.

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Account; estimation; regard; heed.

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Speech; language.

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A speech; a statement; talk; conversation; discourse.

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A count; declaration.

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A number of things considered as an aggregate; sum.

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A report of any matter; a relation; a version.

If they could talk, what tales these hills could tell.

They are not tales of aberrant individuals but of societal norms.

Fairy tales have always had a darker side.

Ryland worked for the National Forest Service and regaled Donnie with tales of the outdoor splendors of the Colorado mountains.

The Crusades afforded new details which might be inserted into old matters, and a new spirit which might be infused into old subjects; and a crusading complexion thus came to be put upon old tales like those of Arthur and Charlemagne.

She sat a long time looking at the receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square.

What makes you think I won't start telling tales?

Edith Shipton sat nearby, long finished with her meal, oblivious to Gladys' tales.

He'd urged her to hide herself away when she wasn't at work with him, telling her tales of how bad the upper class was.

She rode across country with her brother, she went out shooting with Deschatres, she sat by the cottage doors on the long summer evenings and heard the flax-dressers tell their tales of witches and warlocks.

His novels, for the most part published first in London, reflect his wild adventurous life, the best known being The Son of the Wolf (1900); The Call of the Wild (1903); Moon Face (1906); Martin Eden (1909); South Sea Tales (1912), and his last, The Little Lady of the Big House (1916).

For several reasons the first of these tales is preferable.

This collection, which has been widely read, is a pendant to the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius and the monkish tales of Sozomen.

Sisenna also translated the tales of Aristides of Miletus, and is supposed by some to have written a commentary on Plautus.

From the archaic style in which these mythological tales are usually composed, as well as from the fact that not a few of them are found in Brahmanas of different schools and Vedas, though often with considerable variations, it seems pretty evident that the groundwork of them must go back to times preceding the composition or final redaction of the existing Brahmanas.

In the midst of privation and anxiety, due largely to her husband's precarious health, she wrote continually, and in 1843 published The Mayflower, a collection of tales and sketches.

For some of these we have no certain information, and regarding others the tales narrated in the early records are so hard to reconcile with present knowledge that they are better fitted to be the battle-ground of scholars championing rival theories than the basis of definite history.

Aepyornis maxima, which laid enormous eggs, and not unnaturally recalls the mythical " roc " that figures so largely in Arabian tales.

Even as an undergraduate he had " commenced author " with Sir Quixote (1895), and he followed this with other tales and novels.

He wrote too some excellent tales of adventure, notably The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and Greenmantle (1916).

Instead of reading Aristotle and other naturalists, people went for information to commonplace books like those of Aelian, in which scraps of folk-lore, travellers' tales and fragments of misapprehended science were set forth in an elegant style.

Physiologus had been abandoned by scholars, and left to take its chance among the tales and traditions of the uneducated mass.

The tales told by the royalist writers of the barbarous cruelty inflicted by Simon and his wife on the child are not proven.

The Judas legend, however, never really became popular, whereas that of Oedipus was handed down both orally and in written national tales (Albanian, Finnish, Cypriote).

Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning everything and running away from home.

It appears to be traceable in its Greek dress in writings of the philosopher Democritus and the dramatist Menander; it was certainly known to the author of Tobit and perhaps to the author of Daniel; some would trace its influence in the New Testament, in the parable of the wicked servant and elsewhere; it was known to Mahomet and is referred to in the Koran; it has been included among the tales in the Arabian Nights; and it survives in a good many versions ancient and modern.

Bodh the periodeutes is credited with a philosophical work which has perished, but is best known as the author of the old Syriac version of the collection of Indian tales called Kalilah and Dimnah.

He is always and everywhere sentimental, though very frequently, as in his shorter prose tales (The Stone Mason of Saint-Point, Graziella, &c.), he is graceful as well as sentimental.

Since her marriage with Lord Edward she had been greatly beloved and esteemed by the whole Fitzgerald family; and although after her second marriage her intimacy with them ceased, there is no sufficient evidence for the tales that represented her subsequent conduct as open to grave censure.

He went on writing satiric tales like Zadig.

Even Voltaire did not venture to publish this lampoon on a great official of a prince so touchy as the king of Prussia without some permission, and if all tales are true he obtained this by another piece of something like forgery - getting the king to endorse a totally different pamphlet on its last leaf, and affixing that last leaf to Akakia.

The growth of city life in the Abbasid capital led to the desire for a new form of story, differing from the old tales of desert life.

A more important addition to Japanese literature was made in the I 7th century in the form of childrens tales (Otogibanashi).

Mention should also be made of several charming series of fairy tales, of which that published in English by the Kobunsha in Tokyo in 1885 is perhaps the best.

But a great part of the book, especially the latter portion, is dull; and in fact it may be generally remarked of Defoe that the conclusions of his tales are not equal to the beginning, perhaps from the restless indefatigability with which he undertook one work almost before finishing another.

A cycle of tales is devoted to a strange humorous being called Yehl or Yelch, i.e.

Other tales said the stone was the one given by Rhea to Cronus as a substitute for Zeus.

There is good ground for believing that as Grail quester and winner, Gawain preceded alike Perceval and Galahad, and that the solution of the mysterious Grail problem is to be sought rather in the tales connected with the older hero than in those devoted to the glorification of the younger knights.

But the tendency of his art is to give rise to new tales of the gods.

The purely fictitious and romantic tales added to the personal history of Charlemagne and his warriors in the 13th century are inferior in manner, and belong to the decadence of romance.

The old tales, very much distorted in the 15th-century prose versions, were to undergo still further degradation in 18th-century compilations.

In the narrative of William Rubruquis (1253), though distinct reference is made to the conquering Gur Khan under the name of Coir Cham of Caracatay, the title of "King John" is assigned to Kushluk, king of the Naimans, who had married the daughter of the last lineal representative of the gur khans.(fn 2) And from the remarks which Rubruquis makes in connexion with this King John, on the habit of the Nestorians to spin wonderful stories out of nothing, and of the great tales that went forth about King John, it is evident that the intelligent traveller supposed this king of the Naimans to be the original of the widely spread legend.

With this mention Prester John ceases to have any pretension to historical existence in Asia (for we need not turn aside to Mandeville's fabulous revival of old stories or to the barefaced fictions of his contemporary, John of Hese, which bring in the old tales of the miraculous body of St Thomas), and his connexion with that quarter of the world gradually died out of the memory of Europe.(fn 3) When next we begin to hear his name it is as an African, not as an Asiatic prince; and the personage so styled is in fact the Christian king of Abyssinia.

But the Greenland colony was obscure, the country was believed to form part of Europe, and the records of the farther explorations were contained in sagas which were only rediscovered by modern scholarship. Throughout the middle ages, legendary tales of mythical lands lying in the western ocean - the Isle of St Brandan, of Brazil and Antilia - had been handed down.

A picturesque sketch of the Pilgrims of IV alsingham appeared in 1835, two volumes of Tales and Stories from History in the following year.

These " pilgrim signs " are frequently alluded to in literature - notably in the Canterbury Tales and in Piers Plowman.

Lyte's first work was Tales in Verse illustrative of Several of the Petitions in the Lord's Prayer (1826), which was written at Lymington.

From the Kenites, at any rate, they may have received, not only a strong religious impulse, but a store of tales of the primitive age, and these stories too may have been partly influenced by Babylonian traditions.

In late post-exilic times, however, foreign tales, even if of mythical origin, naturally came into favour, especially as religious symbols.

He inveighs against the oppression of the poor by the rich, reproves those who, weary of matins or mass, spend their time in church "jangling," telling tales, and wondering where they will get the best ale, and revives the legend of the dancers at the church door during mass who were cursed by the priest and went on dancing for a twelvemonth without cessation.