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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

cautionary tale en · NOUN

Meanings

  1. (idiomatic) A story, originally told in folklore, to warn its audience of a certain danger.
    • This tone has slowly given way to a realization that the country’s experience might be less a curiosity than a cautionary tale. 2018 November 13, Kate Julian, “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?”, in The Atlantic:
    • And Harford’s book, of course, has more than a decade of fresh cautionary tales from our troubled era of social media, big data, algorithmic mayhem, and “alternative facts” on which to draw. 2020 November 17, Ben Chu, “Review: How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford”, in The Independent, retrieved 13 Jan 2021:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
cautionary tales Number=Plur lexicographic

Hypernyms

tale · story

Translations (16)

de abschreckendes Beispiel (story) · es cuento moralizante (story) · ru поучи́тельная исто́рия (story) · fr fable (story) · fr leçon (story) · fi opettavainen kertomus (story) · de belehrende Erzählung (story) · fr conte moral (story) · de Vorsichtsgeschichte (story) · es aviso a navegantes (story) · de Fabel (story) · fr avertissement (story) · de Schauermärchen (story) · sv sedelärande historia (story) · it storiella ammonitrice (story) · cmn 警世故事 (story)