"truth to tell" meaning in English

{
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        "2": "interjection"
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      "expansion": "truth to tell",
      "name": "head"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1838, Charles Dickens, chapter 51, in Oliver Twist",
          "text": "Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1915, Harold MacGrath, chapter 13, in The Voice In The Fog",
          "text": "Haggerty had his trouble for nothing. There was no clue whatever in Lord Monckton's suite. . . . Truth to tell, Haggerty had not expected to find anything.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 April 17, David Van Biema, “The Pope on Academic Freedom”, in Time, retrieved 2015-07-07",
          "text": "In 1999 the American bishops mandated that if a college wanted to call itself Catholic, its theologians needed a bishop's good-housekeeping seal. And yet, truth to tell, the majority of Catholic schools hadn't really toed the line.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Actually; frankly; as a matter of fact."
      ],
      "id": "en-truth_to_tell-en-intj-yc3m4zu3",
      "links": [
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          "set phrase",
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        [
          "Actually",
          "actually"
        ],
        [
          "frankly",
          "frankly"
        ],
        [
          "as a matter of fact",
          "as a matter of fact"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "set phrase",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(set phrase) Actually; frankly; as a matter of fact."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "truth be told"
        },
        {
          "word": "if truth be told"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "truth to tell"
}

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "interjection"
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      "expansion": "truth to tell",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "intj",
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        "English interjections",
        "English lemmas",
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        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1838, Charles Dickens, chapter 51, in Oliver Twist",
          "text": "Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1915, Harold MacGrath, chapter 13, in The Voice In The Fog",
          "text": "Haggerty had his trouble for nothing. There was no clue whatever in Lord Monckton's suite. . . . Truth to tell, Haggerty had not expected to find anything.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2008 April 17, David Van Biema, “The Pope on Academic Freedom”, in Time, retrieved 2015-07-07",
          "text": "In 1999 the American bishops mandated that if a college wanted to call itself Catholic, its theologians needed a bishop's good-housekeeping seal. And yet, truth to tell, the majority of Catholic schools hadn't really toed the line.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Actually; frankly; as a matter of fact."
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          "as a matter of fact",
          "as a matter of fact"
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(set phrase) Actually; frankly; as a matter of fact."
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "truth be told"
    },
    {
      "word": "if truth be told"
    }
  ],
  "word": "truth to tell"
}