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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

This particular shaggy-dog story gets very shaggy, and at times it’s not clear whether Buckley himself knows where he wants the narrative to go.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 4, 2022

“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

As anti-comedy, the shaggy-dog story congratulates the audience for being in on the absence of a joke.

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

Its title notwithstanding, “Kim’s Video,” co-directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin and narrated by Redmon, is less a retail history than a shaggy dog story.

From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2024

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

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