What's the difference between betray and tell?

Betray


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to give up treacherously or faithlessly; as, an officer betrayed the city.
  • (v. t.) To prove faithless or treacherous to, as to a trust or one who trusts; to be false to; to deceive; as, to betray a person or a cause.
  • (v. t.) To violate the confidence of, by disclosing a secret, or that which one is bound in honor not to make known.
  • (v. t.) To disclose or discover, as something which prudence would conceal; to reveal unintentionally.
  • (v. t.) To mislead; to expose to inconvenience not foreseen to lead into error or sin.
  • (v. t.) To lead astray, as a maiden; to seduce (as under promise of marriage) and then abandon.
  • (v. t.) To show or to indicate; -- said of what is not obvious at first, or would otherwise be concealed.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I know the man, and I know he betrays everyone who gets close to him," said one prominent Lebanese politician.
  • (2) The voice claiming to be Chávez says he is convalescing and his closest friends betrayed him.
  • (3) Asked by television reporters outside the church for comment on the officers’ decision to turn their backs, Lynch said: “The feeling is real, but today is about mourning, tomorrow is about debate.” Pressed on the point, Lynch said: “We have to understand the betrayal that they feel.
  • (4) Those Labour MPs plunging their party into an unwanted crisis are betraying not only the party itself but also our national interest at one of the most critical moments any of us can recall.
  • (5) It is a betrayal that will see thousands of young people decide that they cannot risk the debt that going to university would load them with.
  • (6) Plenty of people felt embarrassed, upset, outraged or betrayed by the Goncourts' record of things they had said or had said about them.
  • (7) Tories, for their part, claim that Lib Dems are betraying a promise to vote for the boundary review in return for being able to hold a national referendum on introducing a new alternative vote system last year.
  • (8) What I can say is that it was a disaster and a betrayal to Ludlam, and I can only apologise for not having been more proactive in defending him.
  • (9) You’re betraying the working class of Britain they tell me.
  • (10) A flawed heroine of the anti-apartheid struggle, she is unlikely to keep a low profile in the coming days or to bite her lip if she believes Mandela's memory is being betrayed.
  • (11) This is a man who has betrayed his country,” Kerry told CBS News .
  • (12) Couple this with the revelation that degrees might not even be worth the investment, and the sense of betrayal from those who have already graduated risks spilling over.
  • (13) Bill Gates betrayed his ailing business partner and tried to deprive him of his share of the Microsoft fortune, according to a scathing memoir from Paul Allen , the company's billionaire co-founder.
  • (14) Actually, I had betrayed the seriousness of what had happened, because my story ignored the fact that I had been genuinely frightened and in a degree of danger during the heckling.
  • (15) So maybe tiki-taka hasn't died, but Spain betrayed it by trying to play with a recognized striker, and then with whatever the hell Fernando Torres is."
  • (16) By the most generous standards it is a serious lapse if not a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC's reputation has been built over generations.
  • (17) Far from being disgusted with her physicality, Ruskin – a rigorous Christian and idealist – felt anxious and subconsciously betrayed by the realisation that his love for Effie was a one-sided affair.
  • (18) Every detail of the dissolution honours betrayed contempt for the public.
  • (19) But she raised concerns that parents' fears over costs betray a lack of understanding of grants and loans available to students from less affluent homes, suggesting more should be done to explain all the options.
  • (20) For all the bad blood of the past year, for all the talk of betrayal, there remains the kernel of a progressive consensus.

Tell


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To mention one by one, or piece by piece; to recount; to enumerate; to reckon; to number; to count; as, to tell money.
  • (v. t.) To utter or recite in detail; to give an account of; to narrate.
  • (v. t.) To make known; to publish; to disclose; to divulge.
  • (v. t.) To give instruction to; to make report to; to acquaint; to teach; to inform.
  • (v. t.) To order; to request; to command.
  • (v. t.) To discern so as to report; to ascertain by observing; to find out; to discover; as, I can not tell where one color ends and the other begins.
  • (v. t.) To make account of; to regard; to reckon; to value; to estimate.
  • (v. i.) To give an account; to make report.
  • (v. i.) To take effect; to produce a marked effect; as, every shot tells; every expression tells.
  • (n.) That which is told; tale; account.
  • (n.) A hill or mound.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Michael James, 52, from Tower Hamlets Three days after telling his landlord that the flat upstairs was a deathtrap, Michael James was handed an eviction notice.
  • (2) In platform shoes to emulate Johnson's height, and with the aid of prosthetic earlobes, Cranston becomes the 36th president: he bullies and cajoles, flatters and snarls and barks, tells dirty jokes or glows with idealism as required, and delivers the famous "Johnson treatment" to everyone from Martin Luther King to the racist Alabama governor George Wallace.
  • (3) Today’s figures tell us little about the timing of the first increase in interest rates, which will depend on bigger picture news on domestic growth, pay trends and perceived downside risks in the global economy,” he said.
  • (4) Anytime they feel parts of the Basic Law are not up to their current standards of political correctness, they will change it and tell Hong Kong courts to obey.
  • (5) "With hyperspectral imaging, you can tell the chemical content of a cake just by taking a photo of it.
  • (6) I think he had been saying all season that with three or four games to go he will tell us where we are.
  • (7) I can see you use humour as a defence mechanism, so in return I could just tell you that if he's massively rich or famous and you've decided you'll put up with it to please him, you'll eventually discover it's not worth it.
  • (8) Are you ready to vote?” is the battle cry, and even the most superficial of glances at the statistics tells why.
  • (9) But what they take for a witticism might very well be true; most of Ellis's novels tell more or less the same story, about the same alienated ennui, and maybe they really are nothing more than the fictionalised diaries of an unremarkably unhappy man.
  • (10) On Friday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry appeared to confirm those fears, telling reporters that the joint declaration, a deal negotiated by London and Beijing guaranteeing Hong Kong’s way of life for 50 years, “was a historical document that no longer had any practical significance”.
  • (11) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall tried to liven things up, but there are only so many ways to tell us to be nice to chickens.
  • (12) David Hamilton tells me: “The days of westerners leading expeditions to Nepal will pass.
  • (13) If Del Bosque really want to win this World Cup thingymebob, then he has got to tell Iker Casillas that the jig is up, correct?
  • (14) Will African film-makers tell those kind of films differently?
  • (15) July 7, 2016 Verified account A blue tick that tells you the user is either an A-list celebrity, a respected authority on an important subject or a BuzzFeed employee.
  • (16) The education secretary's wife, Sarah Vine, a columnist, said her son William, nine, and daughter Beatrice, 11, now realise how much their father is hated for his position in government because other children tell them in the playground.
  • (17) You can tell them that Deutsche Bank remains absolutely rock solid, given our strong capital and risk position.
  • (18) The debate certainly hit upon a larger issue: the tendency for people in positions of social and cultural power to tell the stories of minorities for them, rather than allowing minority communities to speak for themselves.
  • (19) In saying what he did, he was not telling any frequent flyer something they didn't already know, and he was not protesting about any newly adopted measures.
  • (20) Blight responded with a hypothetical, telling Ludlam if the ASD asked a foreign agency to get material about Australian citizens it could not access under Australian law, the IGIS would know about it and flag it in its annual report.