sob story
16
4.9
- noun
- /sɑb ˈstɔri/
- Informal
:
historia para dar pena
- No one is buying his sob story; he is a failure, and his record shows this.
- tell a sob story
- hear my sob story
- give a sob story
So laughter, singing, dancing, eating socially together, feasting, telling emotional sob stories.
- So laughter, singing, dancing, eating socially together, feasting, telling emotional sob stories.
- And so often, if you pay attention, those really extreme sob stories are in fact people who took out bonkers, bonkers money for a master's degree or whatever.
Examples
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Don't play the sob story game with me, okay, Doug?
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Spare us the sob story and tell us the truth.
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You do not want to start the whole sob story game.
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Even the sob story about your dad?
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You want to hear my sob story?
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Everyone's got their sob story, right?
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My intention tonight isn't to complain or share a sob story.
Blog text (5) -
Their legislators posted daily sob stories on the congressional video monitors.
Fiction book (2000) -
Someone had accosted her in the subway station with a sob story and asked to be swiped through.
Blog text (13) -
Before I make my case, let me share my sob story about losing my job and struggling to pay bills.
Synonyms
5
4.2
A sad film or book that makes people cry
Words or stories meant to make people feel pity by showing personal suffering
Antonyms
How Sentimental
Surface Forms
Morphology
The basic idea — a 'story' involving 'sob' (crying) — is directly inferable, so learners can guess it refers to a tale about distress that elicits sympathy. However, the pragmatic sense that such a tale is often exaggerated or manipulative is an idiomatic extension that a B1 learner who has not seen the phrase may not fully predict, so it is not fully transparent.
Etymology
Sob story The phrase sob story comes from the image of someone crying, a sob, while telling a sad story to make people feel sorry. So, a sob story means 'a story told to get sympathy, often exaggerated'.