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• shaggy-dog story
  shaggy-dog story

  noun

  a funny story, traditionally about a talking dog, that, after an often long and involved narration of unimportant incidents, has an absurd or irrelevant punch line.
• shaggy dog story
  shaggy dog story

  noun

  a long rambling joke ending in a deliberate anticlimax, such as a pointless punch line

shaggy-dog story

American  

[shag-ee-dawg, -dog] / ˈʃæg iˈdɔg, -ˈdɒg /

noun

1. a funny story, traditionally about a talking dog, that, after an often long and involved narration of unimportant incidents, has an absurd or irrelevant punch line.

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shaggy dog story British  

noun

1. informal a long rambling joke ending in a deliberate anticlimax, such as a pointless punch line

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shaggy-dog story Idioms  

1. A long drawn-out anecdote with an absurd or anticlimactic ending. For example, At first he had us laughing wildly at his shaggy-dog stories, but after the third or fourth we found them tiresome. The term alludes to a well-known series of such stories, which involved a talking dog. [c. 1940]

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Etymology

Origin of shaggy-dog story

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

shaggy-dog story shaggy dog story

A shaggy-dog story ensues: Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Robbins take some trash to the city dump, but, finding it closed, leave it in a ravine instead.

From New York Times ● Nov. 22, 2024

“Licorice Pizza”: Paul Thomas Anderson’s shaggy-dog story of self-discovery in ’70s San Fernando Valley feels to me like a loose, easy-breathing culmination for Anderson, a virtuoso filmmaker here at his most tender and organic.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 8, 2021

I wouldn’t have dared say that out loud, but even then, I think, I somehow sensed that this was a climax that wouldn’t provide much resolution, a space-age shaggy-dog story.

From The New Yorker ● Jul. 18, 2019

But in some other crucial respects, Mr Anderson’s shaggy-dog story is lagging behind the pack.

From Economist ● Feb. 22, 2018

Sure we do: they're going to give us a big long shaggy-dog story about the Life and Miracles of Saint Austin Maverick.

From Lone Star Planet by Piper, H. Beam

Despite the multifariousness, “All-Night Pharmacy” is not a shaggy dog story.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2023

In an interview last year, Prince Harry and his fiancee, American actress Meghan Markle, told their own shaggy dog story.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 18, 2018

What results is a sequence of face-offs, each of which feels as if it might make its own play without adding up to much by the end of the questing, shaggy dog story on view.

From New York Times ● Sep. 8, 2017

Typical jokes included a riff on a bee travelling alongside her on the motorway, and a shaggy dog story about the year she kept bumping into 1980s pop star Taylor Dayne.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2016

He was beginning to feel like a character in a shaggy dog story.

From Off Course by Freas, Kelly