means A story, told or written, often imaginative or fictional, and sometimes a false or exaggerated account meant to mislead.

from From Old English 'talu,' meaning a tale, story, or reckoning — and tellingly, also 'a counting,' since to 'tell' once meant to count (a sense still alive in a bank teller and in tallying). The Germanic roots run deep, with cousins in Old Norse 'tala' (speech, number) and German 'Zahl' (number). So a tale was once kin to arithmetic: an account given, a tally of words set in order, long before it learned to lie convincingly.