tell the truth

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tell the truth (third-person singular simple present tells the truth, present participle telling the truth, simple past and past participle told the truth)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see tell,‎ truth.
   • 2022 September 26, “Putin grants Russian citizenship to U.S. whistleblower Snowden”, in Mark Trevelyan, editor, Reuters‎, archived from the original on 26 September 2022, Europe:

     That year a U.S. appeals court found the program Snowden had exposed was unlawful and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.

tell the truth

1. (idiomatic, informal) Used to positively assert the frank honesty of an associated statement of set of statements; equivalent to "to tell the truth".
   • 1991, Mike Sirota, Bicycling Through Space and Time:

     Then it sneezed. Considering what it was smelling, that was no surprise. Tell the truth, I'd gotten so used to the jof jof dung that I didn't notice it anymore.

• Used bracketed by punctuation, especially commas, dashes, or parentheses.
• Less intimate than tell you the truth.

• (asserting frank honesty of statement): frankly, honestly, tell you the truth

• tell you the truth