{
  "id": "tell.communication",
  "term": "tell",
  "sense": "communication",
  "pos": "verb",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 9,
  "arena": "emergence",
  "domain": "language",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "to say something to someone so that they know it",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "said.speech",
      "message.information",
      "know.cognitive",
      "says.speech",
      "someone.person"
    ],
    "interaction": "said.speech and message.information are combined with someone.person and know.cognitive through says.speech to convey information from one person to another such that the recipient comes to know it.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "information transfer to awareness",
      "directed communication",
      "knowledge uptake by recipient"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In 2019, a teacher at Riverside High told students about the school's closure during an assembly.",
      "domain": "everyday life"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Voyager 1 probe sent a signal from 15 billion miles away saying its instruments were functioning.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 1944, a prisoner at Auschwitz secretly told a guard about an upcoming escape attempt.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "act.deed",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "message.information",
      "note": "abstracts",
      "type": "abstracts"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "tell",
    "telling",
    "tells",
    "told"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive concepts to align the emergence record with the definition, which is accurate and minimal."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-tell.communication"
}