telling

1. 1.

   disclosing unintentionally something concealed

   “a telling smile”

   “a telltale panel of lights”

   “a telltale patch of oil on the water marked where the boat went down”

   Synonymsrevealingtelltale

   Similarinformative
2. 2.

   powerfully persuasive

   “a cogent argument”

   “a telling presentation”

   “a weighty argument”

   Synonymscogentweighty

   Similarpersuasive
3. 3.

   producing a strong effect

   “gave an impressive performance as Othello”

   “a telling gesture”

   Synonymsimpressive

   Similareffective

Other forms of telling

plural

tellings·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about telling

What does telling mean?

telling means "an act of narration". That is the primary sense; the word has 6 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in telling?

telling has 2 syllables: tel-ling. The stress falls on "tel". In IPA it is /ˈtɛlɪŋ/.

What is another word for telling?

Close synonyms include relation, recounting, apprisal, notification, tattle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is telling a common word?

telling is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with telling?

1 word rhymes with telling. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.