know vs tell

know

verb
  • To have knowledge; to have information, be informed. 

  • To perceive the truth or factuality of; to be certain of or that. 

  • To experience. 

  • To understand or have a grasp of through experience or study. 

  • To be or become aware or cognizant. 

  • To be able to play or perform (a song or other piece of music). 

  • To be acquainted or familiar with; to have encountered. 

  • To be aware of; to be cognizant of. 

  • To recognize as the same (as someone or something previously encountered) after an absence or change. 

noun
  • Knowledge; the state of knowing. 

  • Knowledge; the state of knowing; now confined to the fixed phrase ‘in the know’ 

tell

verb
  • To instruct or inform. 

  • To order; to direct, to say to someone. 

  • To narrate. 

  • To reveal. 

  • To convey by speech; to say. 

  • To reveal information in prose through outright expository statement -- contrasted with show 

  • To count, reckon, or enumerate. 

  • To have an effect, especially a noticeable one; to be apparent, to be demonstrated. 

  • To inform someone in authority about a wrongdoing. 

  • To discern, notice, identify or distinguish. 

  • To be revealed. 

  • To use (beads or similar objects) as an aid to prayer. 

noun
  • A private message to an individual in a chat room; a whisper. 

  • A hill or mound, originally and especially in the Middle East, over or consisting of the ruins of ancient settlements. 

  • A reflexive, often habitual behavior, especially one occurring in a context that often features attempts at deception by persons under psychological stress (such as a poker game or police interrogation), that reveals information that the person exhibiting the behavior is attempting to withhold. 

How often have the words know and tell occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )