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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

“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

If “Motherless Brooklyn” could have stayed in that space, balancing its shaggy-dog story and social conscience a bit more economically, it might have been a home run.

From Washington Post • Oct. 30, 2019

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

The moth joke is not a shaggy-dog story, one of those ambling anecdotes with no point.

From New York Times • Aug. 30, 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