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Synonyms

make a long story short

Idioms  

  1. Get to the point, as in To make a long story short, they got married and moved to Omaha. Although the idea of abbreviating a long-winded account is ancient, this precise phrase dates only from the 1800s. Henry David Thoreau played on it in a letter of 1857: “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long time to make it short.”

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

To make a long story short, in this book Lewis doesn’t exercise any.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 2, 2023

"To make a long story short, everyone loved the smoked turkey, and I am now responsible for the one-and-only turkey each year," Hill adds.

From Fox News • Nov. 21, 2021

In this case, to make a long story short, the Hudson River waterfront park needed to replace a pier where it once raised money with events.

From Slate • Jun. 7, 2021

And to make a long story short, we communicated that to the folks at the White House that we can’t sign off on this.

From MSNBC • Jun. 26, 2019

To make a long story short, we won the same rights that the demon citizens had in rebuilding on their old sites.

From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.