question
'How the fuck should I know?' I asked him, loud enough to turn some heads in a nearby booth. And then: 'She was pregnant.'
His face grew very still. ' What?'
I struggled to keep my voice down. 'Pregnant. Six or seven weeks, according to the . . . you know, the autopsy. Did you know? Did she tell you?'
'No! Christ, no!' But there was a funny look on his face, as if she had told him something . 'I knew you were trying, of course . . . she said you had a low sperm count and it might take a little while, but the doctor thought you guys'd probably . . . sooner or later you'd probably . . . ' He trailed off, looking down at his hands. 'They can tell that, huh? They check for that?'
'They can tell. As for checking, I don't know if they do it automatically or not. I asked.'
'Why?'
'She didn't just buy sinus medicine before she died. She also bought one of those home pregnancy-testing kits.'
Question: 'They can tell that, huh? They check for that?' -- what does ‘tell’ mean in this case?
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 5
1
According to the contexts and Oxford dictionary, I believe 'tell' means:
to know, see or judge sth correctly.
Here are examples:
>>I think he's happy. It's hard to tell.
>>As far as I can tell, she's enjoying the course.
I believe the sentences from Stephen King`s fiction, Bag of Bones. "They" refers to the doctors.
1
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tell
Definition 5
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