shaggy dog story
1
8.8
- noun
- /ˈʃæɡi dɔɡ ˈstɔri/
- Informal
:
historia absurda
- After a long evening of jokes, someone shared a shaggy dog story that left us all confused.
I'm going to be quick about this because I'd make this a very long shaggy dog story.
- I'm going to be quick about this because I'd make this a very long shaggy dog story.
Examples
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I thought that was just a shaggy dog story.
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This is a shaggy dog story.
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This is a shaggy dog story.
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Both tales are shaggy dog stories.
Blog text (20) -
He told a hilarious shaggy dog story that had everyone laughing by the end.
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The comedian's routine included a classic shaggy dog story that didn't seem to have a punchline.
How Pointless
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'shaggy dog story' does not transparently combine 'shaggy' (hairy), 'dog', and 'story' to yield the idiomatic sense 'a long, pointless joke' — a learner would expect a literal tale about a hairy dog rather than a deliberately rambling, anticlimactic joke. This is a conventionalized, culture-specific label for a type of joke, so B1 learners who know the constituent words but have not seen the idiom would not reliably infer its meaning.
Etymology
Shaggy dog story comes from the picture of a long, silly tale about a scruffy shaggy dog that wanders through many small details. Comedians used this image because the story goes on and on and ends with a weak or no punchline, so the phrase means 'a long, pointless joke'.