TELLER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

• TELLER (noun)
  The noun TELLER has 4 senses:

1. United States physicist (born in Hungary) who worked on the first atom bomb and the first hydrogen bomb (1908-2003)

2. an official appointed to count the votes (especially in legislative assembly)

3. an employee of a bank who receives and pays out money

4. someone who tells a story

  Familiarity information: TELLER used as a noun is uncommon.

• TELLER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

United States physicist (born in Hungary) who worked on the first atom bomb and the first hydrogen bomb (1908-2003)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

Edward Teller; Teller

Instance hypernyms:

nuclear physicist (a physicist who specializes in nuclear physics)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An official appointed to count the votes (especially in legislative assembly)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

teller; vote counter

Hypernyms ("teller" is a kind of...):

functionary; official (a worker who holds or is invested with an office)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "teller"):

canvasser (a person who takes or counts votes)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An employee of a bank who receives and pays out money

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

bank clerk; cashier; teller

Hypernyms ("teller" is a kind of...):

banker (a financier who owns or is an executive in a bank)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Someone who tells a story

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

narrator; storyteller; teller

Hypernyms ("teller" is a kind of...):

speaker; talker; utterer; verbaliser; verbalizer (someone who expresses in language; someone who talks (especially someone who delivers a public speech or someone especially garrulous))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "teller"):

anecdotist; raconteur (a person skilled in telling anecdotes)

fabulist (a person who tells or invents fables)

griot (a storyteller in West Africa; perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village)

Derivation:

tell (narrate or give a detailed account of)

tell (express in words)

 Context examples 

"What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller?" demanded the Misses Eshton.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“You always said he was a story-teller,” sobbed Dora.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“I’m not much of a story-teller,” said our visitor, nervously clasping and unclasping his great, strong hands.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)