"shaggy dog story" meaning in English

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  "etymology_text": "Uncertain; probably from one of two jokes, one in which a protracted search for an alleged remarkably shaggy, talking dog ends in the discovery of the dog which, though it can indeed talk, is disappointingly not so shaggy after all; or one in which an even more protracted search for the shaggiest dog in the world ends in the utterly anticlimactic punchline “Now that’s a shaggy dog!”.",
  "forms": [
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      "form": "shaggy dog stories",
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      "form": "shaggy-dog story",
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        "alternative"
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      "expansion": "shaggy dog story (plural shaggy dog stories)",
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  "hyphenation": [
    "shag‧gy"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "shaggy God story"
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        {
          "ref": "2016, Anna Keay, chapter 11, in The Last Royal Rebel, London: Bloomsbury:",
          "text": "The plot as Titus Oates described it to the Privy Council was something of a shaggy dog story, long on digressions and incidental details, but short on hard facts.",
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        }
      ],
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        "An intentionally long-winded joke or tale featuring the narration of typically irrelevant details, and usually ending with an absurd or pointless punchline which is often a pun or Spoonerism on a known catchphrase, with the intended humor deriving from the combination of the excessive length and the anticlimax."
      ],
      "id": "en-shaggy_dog_story-en-noun-RLwF00Fr",
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          "long-winded",
          "long-winded"
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          "joke",
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        [
          "tale",
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          "narration",
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          "irrelevant"
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          "punchline",
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          "spoonerism"
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          "catchphrase",
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          "anticlimax",
          "anticlimax"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Banbury story of a cock and a bull"
        },
        {
          "word": "cock-and-bull story"
        },
        {
          "word": "fish story"
        },
        {
          "word": "tall tale"
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          "word": "whopper"
        }
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      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "shaggy-dog tale"
        },
        {
          "word": "shaggy dog tale"
        }
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  "word": "shaggy dog story"
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  "etymology_text": "Uncertain; probably from one of two jokes, one in which a protracted search for an alleged remarkably shaggy, talking dog ends in the discovery of the dog which, though it can indeed talk, is disappointingly not so shaggy after all; or one in which an even more protracted search for the shaggiest dog in the world ends in the utterly anticlimactic punchline “Now that’s a shaggy dog!”.",
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        "alternative"
      ]
    }
  ],
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    "shag‧gy"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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      "word": "Banbury story of a cock and a bull"
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          "ref": "2016, Anna Keay, chapter 11, in The Last Royal Rebel, London: Bloomsbury:",
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      ],
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        "An intentionally long-winded joke or tale featuring the narration of typically irrelevant details, and usually ending with an absurd or pointless punchline which is often a pun or Spoonerism on a known catchphrase, with the intended humor deriving from the combination of the excessive length and the anticlimax."
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          "word": "shaggy dog tale"
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  "word": "shaggy dog story"
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