tall tale

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /tɔːl ˈteɪl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /tɔl ˈteɪl/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪl

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

Bulgarian: лъжа́ (bg) f (lǎžá) Chinese: Cantonese: 吹水 (yue) (ceoi1 seoi2) Mandarin: 吹牛 (zh) (chuīniú) Dutch: sterk verhaal Faroese: skrøggsøga f Finnish: kalajuttu (fi) French: galéjade (fr) f, histoire à dormir debout f German: Phantasterei (de) f, Seemannsgarn (de) n, Spinnerei (de) f, Märchengeschichte f, dick aufgetragene Geschichte f Hebrew: צ'יזבט m (chizbat) Hindi: दंतकथा (hi) f (dantakthā) Hungarian: dajkamese (hu), füllentés (hu), hanta (hu), háryjánoskodás (hu), hihetetlen/képtelen történet, lódítás (hu), mese (hu), nagyotmondás (hu) Icelandic: ýkjusaga f Irish: abhóg f, scéal áibhéalach m, siollóg f Italian: balla (it) f, fandonia (it) f, panzana (it) f, storiellina f Japanese: 駄法螺 (dabora), ほら話 (horabanashi) Macedonian: ба́јка f (bájka) Plautdietsch: Ress m Portuguese: conto da carochinha m, conversa fiada (pt) f, história de pescador (pt) f, história para boi dormir (pt) f Russian: ба́йка (ru) f (bájka), небыли́ца (ru) f (nebylíca), враньё (ru) n (vranʹjó) (vranyo, white lies) Spanish: cuento chino m, patraña (es) f Swedish: rövarhistoria (sv) c, fantasteri (sv) Ukrainian: небили́ця f (nebylýcja) Yiddish: באָבע־מעשׂה f (bobe-mayse)

account of questionable veracity — see lie,‎ untruth

See also

• shaggy dog story
• whopper

References

1. Compare “tall, adj. (and n.)”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: 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

• “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.