What's the difference between talk and tell?

Talk


Definition:

  • (n.) To utter words; esp., to converse familiarly; to speak, as in familiar discourse, when two or more persons interchange thoughts.
  • (n.) To confer; to reason; to consult.
  • (n.) To prate; to speak impertinently.
  • (v. t.) To speak freely; to use for conversing or communicating; as, to talk French.
  • (v. t.) To deliver in talking; to speak; to utter; to make a subject of conversation; as, to talk nonsense; to talk politics.
  • (v. t.) To consume or spend in talking; -- often followed by away; as, to talk away an evening.
  • (v. t.) To cause to be or become by talking.
  • (n.) The act of talking; especially, familiar converse; mutual discourse; that which is uttered, especially in familiar conversation, or the mutual converse of two or more.
  • (n.) Report; rumor; as, to hear talk of war.
  • (n.) Subject of discourse; as, his achievment is the talk of the town.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You lot have got real issues to talk about and deal with.
  • (2) In the bars of Antwerp and the cafes of Bruges, the talk is less of Christmas markets and hot chocolate than of the rising cost of financing a national debt which stands at 100% of annual national income.
  • (3) Another interested party, the University of Miami, had been in talks with the Beckham group over the potential for a shared stadium project.
  • (4) Mike Ashley told Lee Charnley that maybe he could talk with me last week but I said: ‘Listen, we cannot say too much so I think it’s better if we wait.’ The message Mike Ashley is sending is quite positive, but it was better to talk after we play Tottenham.” Benítez will ask Ashley for written assurances over his transfer budget, control of transfers and other spheres of club autonomy, but can also reassure the owner that the prospect of managing in the second tier holds few fears for him.
  • (5) I remember talking to an investment banker about what it felt like in the City before the closure of Lehman Brothers.
  • (6) Do [MPs] remember the madness of those advertisements that talked of the cool fresh mountain air of menthol cigarettes?
  • (7) Peter Stott of the Met Office, who led the study, said: "With global warming we're talking about very big changes in the overall water cycle.
  • (8) A Palestinian delegation was to hold truce talks on Sunday in Cairo with senior US and Egyptian officials, but Israel has said it sees no point in sending its negotiators to the meeting, citing what it says are Hamas breaches of previous agreed truces.
  • (9) The surge the prime minister talks about can only be achieved by coordinating assets across 43 forces.
  • (10) Others said it might appeal to Russia, Assad's chief ally, which backs talks between the regime and the opposition.
  • (11) Nick Mabey, head of the E3G climate thinktank in London, said without US action there were risks talks would stall.
  • (12) The local guide led us down a rough, uneven pathway, talking as he went.
  • (13) Pekka Isosomppi Press counsellor, Finnish embassy, London • It may have been said tongue in cheek, but I must correct Michael Booth on one thing – his claim that no one talks about cricket in Denmark .
  • (14) Families believed that physicians would not listen (13% of sample), would not talk openly (32%), attempted to mislead them (48%), or did not warn about long-term neurodevelopmental problems (70%).
  • (15) It's the roughly $2bn in revenue grossed by his blockbuster movies, some of which he had to be talked into making.
  • (16) The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
  • (17) Now there is talk of adding a range of ultra-trendy kale chips and kale shakes to the menu as well as encouraging customers to design their own bespoke burger.
  • (18) He said: "I don't want to talk any more about politics for one reason because I'm not in the House[es] of Parliament, I'm not a political person, I will talk about only football."
  • (19) China's relations with the NTC were strained last week when it emerged Chinese arms firms had talked to Muammar Gaddafi's representatives about weapons sales .
  • (20) "I was in the car with Matthew and he held out his phone and said: 'We need to talk about this' with a very serious face, and my immediate thought was somebody had found where I lived and had made a direct threat.

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.