A Dictionary of Cont..

tell 500
It means to broadcast by television. Televise, on
the other hand, means to record by means of
television apparatus and to broadcast what is so
recorded (It was found that films could be telecast
just as well as live shows. The news was
televised on the spot).
tell. The past tense is told. The participle is also
told.
When tell means ask it may be followed by an
infinitive, as in tell her to come. When it does
not mean ask it may be followed by a clause, as
in tell her I have gone.
tell; inform; advise; acquaint; apprise. Tell is the
general word meaning to make known by speech
or writing. Znform is a somewhat more formal
word, meaning to impart knowledge of a fact or
circumstance (No Sir, a man has not a right to
think as he pleases; he should inform himself
and think justly). In official circles to inform is
not merel; to &part a piece of knowlehge but
to put the recipient of the information on notice
that he has been told (Were you not informed of
these things?). If someone has been informed of
something, we regard that something as more
authoritative than if he had been informally told.
Informed sources (though the term is often no
more than a journalistic euphemism for rumor
or gossip) are thought to be more reliable than
someone who has simply been told something. In
ordinary commercial correspondence inform is
often pretentious (as in We will inform you when
your order is ready).
Advise properly means to give counsel to,
not merely to give information to (I advise you
to drive carefully over the holiday weekend).
To advise someone that an order has been
shipped is preposterous, though one might advise
him to have a care in dealing with those
who used words with so little knowledge of
their meaning. See advice; advise.
Acquaint in the sense of furnish with knowledge
or inform is considered archaic in England
but is standard in America (I hope you will acquaint
the public with what we have been doing).
Apprise is a seldom used, formal word meaning
to give notice to, inform (He had not been
apprised of the shift in foreign policy. Apprise
my parents, make them rescue me). It is often
followed by of.
telling effect, with. To say of something that was
forcible or vigorous that it was done or spoken or
received or delivered, and so on, with telling
eflect is to employ a hackneyed term.
tell tales out of school. To say of someone who
(often inadvertently) reveals information that
may be hurtful to another that he is telling tales
out of school is to employ a clicht. In addition to
being tedious, it labors to be arch.
temperature. See fever.
tempers the wind to the shorn Iamb, the Lord. As
a pseudo-philosophic (and not wholly justified)
comment on the fact that the tender and the
helpless and the innocent are spared too severe
aflliction, the observation that the Lord tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb is a cliche. Many who
utter it are of the opinion that it is a quotation
from the Bible. It is from Laurence Sterne’s A
Sentimental Journey (1768) where it is a translation
of a sentence in Les Prhmices (1594) of
Henri Estienne. Estienne refers to it as a proverb.
tempest in a teapot. As a term for making a
great fuss over a trifle, a tempest in a teapot is
now a clichC. The phrase has been traced back,
in various forms, to 400 B.C. Cicero referred to
one who “stirred up waves in a wine ladle” and
added “as the saying goes.”
tempo. The plural is tempos or tempi.
temporal; temporary. Though both of these adjectives
refer to time, they do so in different
senses. Temporal is opposed to spiritual, temporary
to permanent. Temporal means of or concerned
with the present life of this world, with
things subject to the sway of time, worldly (The
king was the temporal authority, the Pope the
spiritual authority). Hence temporal is sometimes
used in opposition to ecclesiastical, clerical,
and sacred. Temporary means “for the time
being.” It implies an arrangement established
with no thought of continuance but with the
idea of being changed soon (Joe got a temporary
job driving a cab while he waited for his commission
to come through).
temporary compounds. A true compound word
that is hyphenated, such as secretary-treasurer
or self-respect, keeps its hyphen no matter where
it appears in the sentence. (See compound
words.) But there are other word combinations
that are hyphenated under certain circumstances
and not under others. Absolute consistency in
the use of these hyphens cannot be maintained
and it is questionable whether a ninety percent
consistency is worth the time and trouble it
requires. The following discussion is not offered
as a guide to what ought to be done but merely
as an explanation of the various hyphens one is
likely to see in print.
1. Oil-bearing shale. These words mean “shale
that is bearing oil.” Inverted phrases of this kind,
in which a present participle is preceded by its
object and both qualify a following noun, are
usually hyphenated, as in habit-forming drugs,
money-making ideas, life-giving water. But the
hyphen is not used when expressions of this kind
follow the noun, as in the drug became habit
forming, the idea was money making. (Present
participle combinations do not come under this
rule when the first word is not the object of the
participle, as in a slow moving train, a long suffering
friend.)
2. A face-to-face encounter: under-water
rocks. Prepositional phrases are almost always
hyphenated when they stand before the noun
they qualify but not otherwise, as in it was u
face-to-face encounter, he met him face to face
and there were under-water rocks, the rocks
were under water. (This rule does not apply to
Latin phrases. We write ante helium days, per
diem employees, an ex oficio member.)
3. A light-yellow scarf; a rich-brown cake.
Occasionally a double adjective standing before
a noun can be. read in more than one way. A
light yellow scarf might be a scarf that was light
yellow or it might be a yellow scarf that didn’t
weigh much. A rich brown cake might be a cake