"live to tell the tale" meaning in English

See live to tell the tale in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: lives to tell the tale [present, singular, third-person], living to tell the tale [participle, present], lived to tell the tale [participle, past], lived to tell the tale [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} live to tell the tale (third-person singular simple present lives to tell the tale, present participle living to tell the tale, simple past and past participle lived to tell the tale)
  1. (idiomatic, informal or literary) To survive some difficulty, illness, etc. Tags: idiomatic, informal, literary
    Sense id: en-live_to_tell_the_tale-en-verb-jNdamT8x Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for live to tell the tale meaning in English (1.5kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lives to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "living to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lived to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lived to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "live to tell the tale (third-person singular simple present lives to tell the tale, present participle living to tell the tale, simple past and past participle lived to tell the tale)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2023 February 22, Stephen Roberts, “Reading... between the lines... to Wales”, in RAIL, number 977, page 59",
          "text": "Chepstow is good for excursions, and Bradshaw tells me I can get a fly to Tintern Abbey, although the fare structure seems particularly complicated. Alternatively, I could go for a simpler choice and just opt for \"single horse, 1s\", although I doubt I'd survive to tell the tale.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To survive some difficulty, illness, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-live_to_tell_the_tale-en-verb-jNdamT8x",
      "links": [
        [
          "survive",
          "survive#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, informal or literary) To survive some difficulty, illness, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal",
        "literary"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "live to tell the tale"
}

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "lives to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "living to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lived to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "lived to tell the tale",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "live to tell the tale (third-person singular simple present lives to tell the tale, present participle living to tell the tale, simple past and past participle lived to tell the tale)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English literary terms",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2023 February 22, Stephen Roberts, “Reading... between the lines... to Wales”, in RAIL, number 977, page 59",
          "text": "Chepstow is good for excursions, and Bradshaw tells me I can get a fly to Tintern Abbey, although the fare structure seems particularly complicated. Alternatively, I could go for a simpler choice and just opt for \"single horse, 1s\", although I doubt I'd survive to tell the tale.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To survive some difficulty, illness, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "survive",
          "survive#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, informal or literary) To survive some difficulty, illness, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal",
        "literary"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "live to tell the tale"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.