tall tale
English edit
Etymology edit
From tall (“exaggerated”) + tale.[1][2]
Pronunciation edit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /tɔːl ˈteɪl/
- (General American) IPA(key): /tɔl ˈteɪl/
Audio (AU) (file) - Rhymes: -eɪl
Noun edit
tall tale (plural tall tales)
- (idiomatic) A tale or story which is fantastic and greatly exaggerated; also, an account of questionable veracity; a lie, an untruth.
- Synonyms: Banbury story of a cock and a bull, cock-and-bull story, fish story, tall story, traveller's tale
- He returned on Monday with a tall tale about a 100-pound fish he had caught.
- 2020 August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, in National Geographic Magazine[1]:
- The head-in-sand idea is a threadbare, 2,000-year-old hand-me-down from the Roman naturalist Pliny, who sometimes passed on tall tales.
Translations edit
tale or story which is fantastic and greatly exaggerated
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Compare “tall, adj. (and n.)”, in OED Online , Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, July 2023.
- ^ “tall tale, n.”, in Collins English Dictionary; from Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary, 6th edition, Boston, Mass.: Heinle Cengage Learning; Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009, →ISBN.
Further reading edit
- “tall tale”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “tall tale” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.
- “tall tale”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.