tell apart

verb

told apart; telling apart; tells apart
: to see what the differences are between (people or things) : to identify (people or things that look similar to each other)
It's hard to tell the twins apart.

Examples of tell apart in a Sentence

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As they are pulled into conflicts that stir dark memories from their own pasts, the boundaries between play and dangerous power struggles dissolve — and victims and perpetrators become impossible to tell apart. Leo Barraclough, Variety, 31 Aug. 2026 Know your treatment options Plain dandruff and a more inflamed seborrheic dermatitis flare-up aren’t always easy to tell apart on your own, but the timeline is a good clue. Ayren Jackson-Cannady, Allure, 20 Aug. 2026 Customer teams with mountains of behavioral data can't reliably tell apart a frustrated customer from one who is just exploring. Dhiraj Adya, Forbes.com, 31 July 2026 Harder to tell apart than Henrik and Daniel were in their 20s, and not by a little bit. Thomas Drance, New York Times, 5 June 2026 See All Example Sentences for tell apart

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Cite this Entry

“Tell apart.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tell%20apart. Accessed 5 Sep. 2026.

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