told
- 1Simple past and past participle of tell.
He told the children to stay close during the museum trip.
The new hires were told to report to the front desk by nine.
Note
An irregular-looking form that began as a regular one: Old English tealde was the past of a verb meaning "to count; tell," built much like tell + -ed, and the vowel shifted along the way. Because tell can take two objects, either one can become the subject of a passive: the children were told a story, or a story was told to the children.
told is a form of tell
tell, verb: To say something to someone in words, such as a fact, an explanation, the truth or a lie, or how to do something. Full entry
- Spelling
- tell → told: irregular (no -ed)
Use it in a sentence
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Origin
"Told" is the past tense of "tell." It comes from Middle English tolde or talde, from Old English tealde, going back to Proto-Germanic *taljaną ("to count; tell"): essentially "tell" plus the past-tense ending.