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there's no telling

there's no telling idiom

It's impossible to determine, as in There's no telling how many children will come down with measles, or There's no telling what will happen in the next episode of that soap opera. This idiom uses telling in the sense of “reckoning,” a usage dating from the late 1300s.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.