Dictionary

untell en · VERB

Etymology

From un- + tell.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To withdraw or retract (something told); to never have told.
   • Narrative untells itself by multiplying itself into discontinuous "turns" that cannot be resolved into a continuous story. 1993, Jack Selzer, Understanding scientific prose, page 54:
   • Trinh (1991) writes that untelling the stories of privilege and marginality is a form of displacement that takes a long time. 1998, Diane DuBose Brunner, Between the masks: resisting the politics of essentialism, page 29:
   • And once his story was told, it was told; there was no way to untell it, no way to make himself look good. 2004, Patrick Bizzaro, More lights than one: on the fiction of Fred Chappell, page 103:
2. (archaic, transitive) To undo or reverse the counting of; to count back.
   • That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, / To untell the days, and to redeem these hours. 1607, Thomas Heywood, A Woman Killed with Kindness:

Forms