untell

present singular third person untells · participle present untelling · participle past untold · past untold

1. transitiveTo withdraw or retract (something told); to never have told.

   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 more examples

   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

2. archaictransitiveTo 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