noun
ADJECTIVE
▪ long , rambling
▪ familiar
▪ amazing , bizarre , curious ( esp. BrE ), extraordinary , fantastic , magical , marvellous/marvelous , strange
▪ awful ( esp. BrE ), sad , sorry , terrible , tragic
▪
the sorry ~ of his marriage breakdown
▪ chilling , gruesome , hair-raising , harrowing , horror , macabre
▪ lurid , sordid , tawdry
▪ dark
▪
a dark ~ of sexual obsession
▪ mysterious , spooky
▪ funny , humorous , witty ( esp. BrE )
▪ fascinating , interesting
▪ heart-warming
▪ simple
▪ fanciful , incredible , tall , unlikely ( esp. BrE )
▪
a tall ~ that would fool no one
▪ true
▪ old wives'
▪ coming-of-age , rags-to-riches
▪
the rags-to-riches ~ of an orphan who becomes a star
▪ epic , heroic
▪
an epic ~ of courage and heroism
▪ cautionary , moral , morality
▪ classic , folk , old , traditional
▪ childhood
▪ fairy ( often figurative )
▪
Winning the French Open was a fairy-tale end to her career.
▪ gothic , romantic
▪ original
VERB + TALE
▪ narrate , recount , regale sb with , relate , tell (sb)
▪
She regaled us with ~s of her wild youth.
▪ hear
▪ make up , spin , weave
▪ read , write
▪ begin
TALE + VERB
▪ begin
▪ unfold
▪ concern sb/sth , involve sb/sth
▪ be set in …
▪
a ~ set in 19th-century Moscow
▪ be based on sth
PREPOSITION
▪ ~ about
▪
a ~ about a hungry snake
▪ ~ of
▪
~s of adventure
▪
the strange ~ of the man who sold his hair
PHRASES
▪ a ~ of woe (= about failure, bad luck, etc.)
▪ (have) a ~ to tell
▪
Each of the survivors had a terrible ~ to tell.
▪ tell ~s (= to say things about sb that are untrue or that they would prefer to be secret) ( BrE )