means The act of conveying events, real or imagined, through narrative — in speech, writing, or performance — to inform, entertain, or move an audience.

from A plain English compound: "story" plus "telling." "Story" arrived through Old French "estorie" from Latin "historia" (an account, a narrative), itself borrowed from Greek "historía," meaning inquiry or knowledge gained by investigation — the same root that gives us "history." "Telling" comes from Old English "tellan," which once meant both to recount and to count or reckon (a kinship still visible in a bank "teller" and the "tally" you keep). So buried in the word is a quiet double sense: to tell a story is, in the oldest grain of the language, both to narrate it and to number it out, item by item.