tell the truth
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
tell the truth (third-person singular simple present tells the truth, present participle telling the truth, simple past and past participle told the truth)
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tell, truth.
- 2022 September 26, “Putin grants Russian citizenship to U.S. whistleblower Snowden”, in Mark Trevelyan, editor, Reuters, archived from the original on 26 September 2022, Europe:
- That year a U.S. appeals court found the program Snowden had exposed was unlawful and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
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Translations
to tell the truth
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Phrase
tell the truth
- (idiomatic, informal) Used to positively assert the frank honesty of an associated statement of set of statements; equivalent to "to tell the truth".
- 1991, Mike Sirota, Bicycling Through Space and Time:
- Then it sneezed. Considering what it was smelling, that was no surprise. Tell the truth, I'd gotten so used to the jof jof dung that I didn't notice it anymore.
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Usage notes
- Used bracketed by punctuation, especially commas, dashes, or parentheses.
- Less intimate than tell you the truth.
Synonyms
- (asserting frank honesty of statement): frankly, honestly, tell you the truth
Related terms
- tell you the truth
Translations
asserting frank honest of associated statement
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