tall tale

English

Etymology

From tall (“exaggerated”) +‎ tale.[1][2]

Pronunciation

Noun

tall tale (plural tall tales)

  1. (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:
      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
tale or story which is fantastic and greatly exaggerated
account of questionable veracity — see lie,‎ untruth

See also

References
  1. Compare “tall, adj. (and n.)”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, July 2023.
  2. “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
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