cock and bull story
- noun
- Informal
:
historia absurda
- Now, that's a cock and bull story if I ever heard one.
Examples
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What sort of cock-and-bull story are you telling us?
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What kind of a cock and bull story is that?
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The maid kept me talking with some... cock and bull story.
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That cock-and-bull story.
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Do you still wish to allege that Mrs. Paradine invented a cock-and-bull story about your leaving the Colonel's service, and that this precipitated the quarrel?
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I couldn't believe the cock and bull story he told to explain why he was late.
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Everyone knew it was just a cock and bull story designed to get sympathy.
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After hearing his cock and bull story, I was convinced he was lying.
Synonyms
∞
7.5
A lie told to avoid trouble
26
4.3
A story many people believe that is probably not true, often about scary or strange events
19
4.0
A story that says things are bigger or more amazing than they really are to be funny
4
6.3
An invented story or plan made to trick people
1
5.5
A made up story told to hide the truth
A silly story that is clearly false and hard to believe
A made-up or exaggerated story that is unlikely to be true
A made-up story told in a big, exciting way to amuse people
Antonyms
How Implausible
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an absurd or implausible story' cannot be derived from the literal constituents: 'cock' (rooster) and 'bull' (male bovine) do not, when combined with 'story', transparently signal deception or implausibility. Although 'bull' can be slang for nonsense in some varieties, the idiomatic pairing 'cock and bull' is historically opaque and unpredictable, so a B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Cock and bull story may come from two old inns called the Cock and the Bull, where travelers would sit and tell tall, silly tales to make each other laugh. One popular story says those made-up tales became known as cock and bull stories, so today the phrase means 'a made-up or not true story'.