shaggy dog story
nounEtymology
Uncertain; probably from one of two jokes, one in which a protracted search for an alleged remarkably shaggy, talking dog ends in the discovery of the dog which, though it can indeed talk, is disappointingly not so shaggy after all; or one in which an even more protracted search for the shaggiest dog in the world ends in the utterly anticlimactic punchline “Now that’s a shaggy dog!”.
Definitions
An intentionally long-winded joke or tale featuring the narration of typically irrelevant…
An intentionally long-winded joke or tale featuring the narration of typically irrelevant details, and usually ending with an absurd or pointless punchline which is often a pun or Spoonerism on a known catchphrase, with the intended humor deriving from the combination of the excessive length and the anticlimax.
- The plot as Titus Oates described it to the Privy Council was something of a shaggy dog story, long on digressions and incidental details, but short on hard facts.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
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sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA