- Tell-tale
A tell-tale is a reference indicator or a sign that clearly signals that something else is true or is about to happen.
ailing
In a nautical or
sailing context a tell-tale is a piece of cloth or fabric that is tied or attached to a stay, one of several wires, that holds a mast in place on asailboat . Usually there will be one tell-tale on the port stay and one on astarboard stay.Tell-tales can also be attached to a
sail , used as a guide when trimming (adjusting) a sail. On themainsail tell-tales are on the leech (aft edge) and when trimmed properly should be streaming backwards. On thejib there are tell-tales on both sides of the luff of the sail. As a general guide, thewindward tell-tale should stream aft (backwards) with an occasional lift, theleeward front tell-tale should stream aft.pace
The Phoenix spacecraft contains a tell-tale, developed by the
University of Aarhus inDenmark , as part of its "Meteorological Station". [Citation
url=http://www.marslab.dk/TelltaleProject.html
title=The Telltale project
author=Mars Simulation Laboratory, University of Aarhus, Denmark] [Citation
url=http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/27/153240
title= Mars Probe Brings the "Weather Rock" New Respect
author=Slashdot 27may2008] It is a small tube that will be deflected by the martian wind. The science payload’sstereo camera will record images of the tell-tale that will be used to determine wind direction and speed. [Citation
url=http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/226508main_phoenix-landing1.pdf
title=Phoenix Landing Mission to the Martian Polar North
editor=Nasa Press Kit/May 2008]Railroad
In a
steam locomotive the tell-tales arelongitudinal holes drilled in the stays of the firebox to provide early warning ofcorrosion .A tell-tale is also a series of ropes suspended over the tracks above the height of a boxcar. These ropes are intended to give warning to a brakeman on the roof of the train that the train is approaching a low-clearance obstacle, such as a tunnel or a bridge. A
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway tell-tale had 17 of these ropes hanging from a tube suspended across the track, the bottom of the ropes 12" lower than the height of the obstruction, and placed 100 to 300 feet before the obstruction.Linguistics
In
linguistics a tell-tale is a string of characters that occurs only within one language within a group of languages. A reader can be completely certain which language they are reading if he or she comes across a tell-tale. In this sense, a tell tale is a dead give away of what the language is.More formally, a tell-tale of a member L of some language class is a finite
subset of "L" such that no other language containing the subset in the class is a proper subset of "L". In other words, a tell-tale is a finite subset that makes a language being a minimal consistent one in the class. The term is used in the field ofartificial intelligence and machine language learning as well as linguistics. See also,Language identification in the limit References
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