"shaggy dog story" meaning in English

See shaggy dog story in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: shaggy dog stories [plural]
Etymology: 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!”. Etymology templates: {{unc|en}} Uncertain Head templates: {{en-noun}} shaggy dog story (plural shaggy dog stories)
  1. A 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. Synonyms: shaggy-dog story, shaggy-dog tale, shaggy dog tale Derived forms: shaggy God story Related terms: Banbury story of a cock and a bull, cock-and-bull story, fish story, tall tale, whopper
    Sense id: en-shaggy_dog_story-en-noun-qxxYdzIk Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for shaggy dog story meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en"
      },
      "expansion": "Uncertain",
      "name": "unc"
    }
  ],
  "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": [
    {
      "form": "shaggy dog stories",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "shaggy dog story (plural shaggy dog stories)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "shag‧gy"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "shaggy God story"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A 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."
      ],
      "id": "en-shaggy_dog_story-en-noun-qxxYdzIk",
      "links": [
        [
          "long-winded",
          "long-winded"
        ],
        [
          "joke",
          "joke#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "tale",
          "tale"
        ],
        [
          "narration",
          "narration"
        ],
        [
          "irrelevant",
          "irrelevant"
        ],
        [
          "absurd",
          "absurd"
        ],
        [
          "pointless",
          "pointless"
        ],
        [
          "punchline",
          "punchline"
        ],
        [
          "pun",
          "pun"
        ],
        [
          "Spoonerism",
          "spoonerism"
        ],
        [
          "catchphrase",
          "catchphrase"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Banbury story of a cock and a bull"
        },
        {
          "word": "cock-and-bull story"
        },
        {
          "word": "fish story"
        },
        {
          "word": "tall tale"
        },
        {
          "word": "whopper"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "shaggy-dog story"
        },
        {
          "word": "shaggy-dog tale"
        },
        {
          "word": "shaggy dog tale"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "shaggy dog story"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "shaggy God story"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en"
      },
      "expansion": "Uncertain",
      "name": "unc"
    }
  ],
  "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": [
    {
      "form": "shaggy dog stories",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "shaggy dog story (plural shaggy dog stories)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "shag‧gy"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Banbury story of a cock and a bull"
    },
    {
      "word": "cock-and-bull story"
    },
    {
      "word": "fish story"
    },
    {
      "word": "tall tale"
    },
    {
      "word": "whopper"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with unknown etymologies"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A 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."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "long-winded",
          "long-winded"
        ],
        [
          "joke",
          "joke#Noun"
        ],
        [
          "tale",
          "tale"
        ],
        [
          "narration",
          "narration"
        ],
        [
          "irrelevant",
          "irrelevant"
        ],
        [
          "absurd",
          "absurd"
        ],
        [
          "pointless",
          "pointless"
        ],
        [
          "punchline",
          "punchline"
        ],
        [
          "pun",
          "pun"
        ],
        [
          "Spoonerism",
          "spoonerism"
        ],
        [
          "catchphrase",
          "catchphrase"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "shaggy-dog story"
    },
    {
      "word": "shaggy-dog tale"
    },
    {
      "word": "shaggy dog tale"
    }
  ],
  "word": "shaggy dog story"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.