untell

untell

English

Etymology

un- +‎ tell

Verb

untell (third-person singular simple present untells, present participle untelling, simple past and past participle untold)

1. (transitive) To withdraw or retract (something told); never to have told.
   • 1993, Jack Selzer, Understanding scientific prose (page 54)

     Narrative untells itself by multiplying itself into discontinuous "turns" that cannot be resolved into a continuous story.

   • 1998, Diane DuBose Brunner, Between the masks: resisting the politics of essentialism (page 29)

     Trinh (1991) writes that untelling the stories of privilege and marginality is a form of displacement that takes a long time.

   • 2004, Patrick Bizzaro, More lights than one: on the fiction of Fred Chappell (page 103)

     And once his story was told, it was told; there was no way to untell it, no way to make himself look good.

2. (transitive, archaic) To undo or reverse the counting of; to count back.
   • 1607, Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness

     That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, / To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.