cautionary tale

English

Noun

cautionary tale (plural cautionary tales)

1. A story, originally told in folklore, to warn its audience of a certain danger.
   • 2018 November 13, Kate Julian, “Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     This tone has slowly given way to a realization that the country’s experience might be less a curiosity than a cautionary tale.

   • 2020 November 17, Ben Chu, “Review: How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford”, in The Independent‎^[2], retrieved 2021-01-13:

     And Harford’s book, of course, has more than a decade of fresh cautionary tales from our troubled era of social media, big data, algorithmic mayhem, and “alternative facts” on which to draw.

Hypernyms

• story, tale

Translations

story

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 警世故事 (jǐngshì gùshi)

• Finnish: opettavainen kertomus
• French: fable (fr) f, conte moral (fr) m, leçon (fr) f, avertissement (fr) m
• German: Fabel (de) f, Schauermärchen n, abschreckendes Beispiel n, Vorsichtsgeschichte f, belehrende Erzählung f
• Italian: storiella ammonitrice f
• Russian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: cuento moralizante m
• Swedish: sedelärande historia

Further reading

• “cautionary tale”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “cautionary tale” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
• cautionary tale on Wikipedia.Wikipedia