Telling can be pictured as the verb tell held still as a thing: the moment when something gets said out loud. From that one picture the rest grow. A story gets a telling, and a second telling, and each one comes out a little different. A pause that nobody meant as an answer can still say everything, so we call it telling. An argument that lands says the last word for you, so that is telling too. And when the answer cannot be said by anyone yet, there is no telling.
From the word’s history
The packet's Wiktionary entry records the noun telling as a gerund of the verb tell (tell + -ing), which matches the core picture: the act of telling, turned into a thing.
packet 裡的 Wiktionary 記載，名詞 telling 是動詞 tell 的動名詞（tell 加 -ing）。這正好對上核心畫面：把「說」這個動作變成一件可以指、可以數的東西。
Wiktionary (kaikki extract supplied in packet, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:846516808)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
tellingadj詞源 1/ˈtɛlɪŋ/
- 1
Having force, or having a marked effect; weighty, effective.
- a telling blow
- 2
Revealing information; bearing significance.
- a telling smile
- But ever since the concept of "hamartia" recurred through Aristotle's Poetics, in an attempt to describe man's ingrained iniquity, our impulse has been to identify a telling defect in those brought suddenly and dramatically low.
- 3
Serving to convince.
- telling evidence
tellingnoun詞源 2/ˈtɛlɪŋ/
- 1
The act of narration.
- 2
The disclosure of information.
- There may he sit and smile, or creep among the ships, or moan and sigh round islands in his great content—the miser lord of wealth in gems and pearls beyond the telling of all fables.
- 3
archaicCounting, numbering.
- 4
Ability to determine.
- "One white man." said Bill, after a brief inspection. "Out on his line, I s'pose, and there's no tellin' when he'll be back. So we won't wait. We'll just serve notice on him."
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。