just-so story
nounEtymology
PIE word *swé From just so (“(almost) exactly or precisely like something”, adjective) + story, referring to the series of short stories called Just So Stories (collected in book form in 1902) by the English writer Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) which described how various animals acquired their distinctive characteristics, such as how the leopard got its spots. According to Kipling, the stories were so titled because they were intended to put his daughter Josephine (“Effie”) to sleep, “and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence.”
Definitions
A story which supposedly explains the beginning or early development of a current state…
A story which supposedly explains the beginning or early development of a current state of affairs; a myth, a pourquoi story.
A story, especially one for children, featuring animals as characters.
An untestable explanation for something, such as a form of behaviour, a biological trait,…
An untestable explanation for something, such as a form of behaviour, a biological trait, or a cultural practice.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for just-so story. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA