Meanings
plural shaggy dog stories · alternative shaggy-dog story
- 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.
2016, Anna Keay, chapter 11, in The Last Royal Rebel, London: BloomsburySynonyms: shaggy-dog tale, shaggy dog tale
Synonyms & antonyms
nounAn 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.
Origin
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!”.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
shaggy dog story. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shaggy%20dog%20story
“shaggy dog story.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shaggy%20dog%20story. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “shaggy dog story,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shaggy%20dog%20story.
Source: shaggy dog story on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.