And thereby hangs a tale

1. An expression, taken from As You Like It, by William Shakespeare, that means roughly “There's a real story behind this.” It is commonly used by someone who is about to give the background of an interesting object, incident, or idea: “The colonel remarked, ‘See that umbrella over the mantelpiece? It saved my life during the war, and thereby hangs a tale.’”

Example Sentences

No, they did not, and thereby hangs a tale.

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And thereby hangs a tale, no doubt, but in the interest of time let’s skip to the finished product: a peeled plum tomato collapsed down to a red cushion that more or less covers the patty.

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On the other hand, there are also the mysterious revolutions of luck, the wheel of chance – and thereby hangs a tale.

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Twenty years ago, I would’ve written, “And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe/ And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot/ And thereby hangs a tale.”

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But then the most beautiful boy in her school, the scion of the town’s richest family, befriended her, and thereby hangs a tale that would end in murder.

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