How to Use tell time in a Sentence

tell time

phrase
  • That’s because a smartwatch can do so much more than tell time.
    — Chris Hachey, BGR, 7 Sep. 2021
  • This watch does what all watches do…which is simply to tell time.
    — The Editors, Outdoor Life, 1 June 2020
  • People have cellphones that tell time.
    — Shayla Love, The Atlantic, 21 Dec. 2025
  • People probably still think of me as the person that can't tell time.
    — Dalton Ross, EW.com, 30 June 2022
  • This was before watches or cell phones, so the ball dropping was the primary way to tell time.
    — Emily Vanschmus, Better Homes & Gardens, 2 Aug. 2023
  • The decision to cancel clocks was made because students no longer knew how to use them to tell time.
    — Kc Cole, Wired, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Its luminescent hands and indexes are designed to tell time even in the dark.
    — Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 27 Sep. 2023
  • My daughter has recently become obsessed with clocks and learning how to tell time.
    — Vogue, 1 Dec. 2021
  • With no natural light in his cell, Kevin began to tell time by the arrival of his three daily meals.
    — Hannah Dreier, Washington Post, 26 Dec. 2020
  • During the trip, he was mesmerized by the view — and by Lane’s ability to tell time by the sun.
    — Alena Naiden, Anchorage Daily News, 28 July 2023
  • Even folks who do drop five figures on watches tend to want something that’ll still tell time (and hold its value) in a couple of decades.
    — Umar Shakir, The Verge, 2 Oct. 2023
  • Such creatures represented clusters of stars that the Egyptians used to tell time at night.
    — Julia Binswanger, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Dec. 2024
  • All four models initially failed to tell time accurately.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 8 Nov. 2025
  • Indeed, some of the most coveted watches today are those that not only tell time but also tell of someone else’s life and times.
    — Kate Murphy, WSJ, 13 Feb. 2022
  • Celeste creates brilliant timepieces with mixed media dials that not only tell time but also serve as an art piece for one’s wrist.
    — Josh Max, Forbes, 14 Oct. 2021
  • The point, however, is that this one doesn’t use the star-wheel complication to tell time, but instead good old hands around a straight-up dial.
    — Allen Farmelo, Robb Report, 21 Oct. 2024
  • These devices tell time, track fitness, and boost productivity.
    — Stefanie Waldek, Travel + Leisure, 19 Jan. 2024
  • The tradition of using balls to tell time has been around for centuries, dating back to the early 1800s.
    — Emily Vanschmus, Better Homes & Gardens, 2 Aug. 2023
  • The exact dates of Passover change every year because the Hebrew calendar is not the same as the calendar used to tell time now.
    — Holly Rizzuto Palker, Parents, 17 Sep. 2023
  • My grandparents were the ones who took care of me after school, who cooked me tomato egg with rice, who taught me how to count to 10 and how to tell time in Mandarin.
    — Summer Linstaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 9 Feb. 2023
  • The atomic clock’s lynchpin is the electron—to tell time, researchers use a laser to coax the electrons to jump back and forth between two specific energy levels.
    — Shi En Kim, Smithsonian Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
  • Some digital watches do more than just tell time, as there are outdoor watches and solar watches that carry compasses, start/stop functions, alarms, and more.
    — John Thompson, menshealth.com, 25 Apr. 2023
  • As of late, the company has switched from using steel nanoballs to tell time (like the ones inside Win’s own hourglass, which had a copper hue) to using larger titanium nanoballs.
    — Nicole Hoey, Robb Report, 7 Apr. 2026
  • Montblanc Technically, watches are no longer essential to tell time and mechanical sports watches certainly aren’t needed as survival tools.
    — Paige Reddinger, Robb Report, 22 Dec. 2023
  • Atomic clocks, including hydrogen masers and cesium beam clocks, rely on the natural resonant frequencies of atoms to tell time with extremely high accuracy.
    — Joe Hernandez, NPR, 21 Dec. 2025
  • The term Ides comes from the Latin word iduare, meaning to divide, with the full moon serving as the division point in the middle of each month as a way to tell time, according to Britannica.
    — Kate Perez, USA Today, 15 Mar. 2026
  • In 1955, when international air travel was becoming a thing, Pan Am asked Rolex to design a watch that allowed its pilots to tell time in two zones.
    — Charles Curkin, ELLE Decor, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Always thinking of romantic new ways to tell time, Van Cleef & Arpels’ latest high horology creations looked to nature to inform two of its most complicated timepieces to date.
    — Paige Reddinger, Robb Report, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Its latest creation capitalizes on the recent trend of functional ring watches, but unlike Timex and Casio’s wearables that don’t do much more than tell time, the Rogbid Fusion includes smart functionality like fitness tracking, heart rate and blood oxygen measurements, and sleep monitoring.
    — Andrew Liszewski, The Verge, 29 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tell time.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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